User:Andy02124/sandbox/footnotes for dummies

(Working title)

Footnotes are the backbone of a wikipedia article, the mechanism for informing your reader that the facts, theories and opinions you present are backed up/supported by (hopefully) reliable sources. An article without footnotes is like a circus tent without a pole — it takes up space but is not particularly useful. And you are liable to be tagged with some version of an Unreferenced or More citations needed notice.

Footnotes can be entered as plain text or formatted using wikitext templates. If you are editing an existing page, try to maintain the established style. Plain text footnotes do not, for better or worse, raise errors, so we will focus on the templated ones, known as shortened footnotes. The key point to remember is: every templated shortened footnote must point to a templated citation. Or else.

I don't see any errors
Footnote error messages are not displayed by default (readers would be shocked to see how many there are). Unfortunately, this lulls authors into believing that everything about their article is copacetic.

You can force error display with a simple modification to your local wiki environment. Instructions are on the page; installing the Trappist the monk Javascript is recommended. Error messages will appear in orange text after the offending footnote, but they won't describe the cause of the error.

This example will raise an error because there is no citation that matches exactly on the name and date specified in the footnote template.

Error text: Harv error: link from CITEREFRumpelstiltskin1886 doesn't point to any citation.

Footnote templates
The wiki templating system automatically builds a reference or anchor, cleverly called CITEREF, for every citation. This anchor enables the link between the shortened footnote and its corresponding citation. You could code CITEREF in the citation template yourself, but why bother – let the system do the work. There are, of course, exceptions; for example, there may not be an author or editor. In these cases, you may add a custom CITEREF by using the parameter ref= or in the citation template.

Shortened footnotes consist of one to four last names of authors, if present, editors if not (other co-conspirators such as translators are not considered) and a year, which is extracted from a year or date parameter, and, optional but recommended, page numbers and/or location information. The shortened footnote name(s) and year link it to a full citation, generally implemented with citation or one of the family templates, such as cite book, cite journal or cite web.

Example sources

Example references

Common errors

 * No corresponding citation
 * The system will not magically pull in some reference just because you've added a short footnote. Be sure there is a corresponding citation.


 * Author/editor name
 * By default, footnotes will attempt to match on last name. Names in the citation should be separated into first= and last= parameters. Although the templating engine can extract a year from a date parameter that may include day and month, it cannot pull a last or surname from an author field.
 * {| class=wikitable


 * }
 * It is possible to use a full author name, as long as the name in the citation and the footnote match. This is useful when it is difficult or unnecessary, as in some languages, to determine which is the first and which is the last name.
 * }
 * It is possible to use a full author name, as long as the name in the citation and the footnote match. This is useful when it is difficult or unnecessary, as in some languages, to determine which is the first and which is the last name.
 * }
 * It is possible to use a full author name, as long as the name in the citation and the footnote match. This is useful when it is difficult or unnecessary, as in some languages, to determine which is the first and which is the last name.
 * }
 * It is possible to use a full author name, as long as the name in the citation and the footnote match. This is useful when it is difficult or unnecessary, as in some languages, to determine which is the first and which is the last name.


 * Bad spelling
 * Capitalization, hyphens and diacritical marks must match. examples (transpose, just wrong, etc.)


 * Wrong year
 * AARGH This is most difficult error to correct. The editor who encounters this has no idea if it is a typo, a different edition of an existing citation, or something else entirely. If it is a different edition, which one reflects the page numbers? Don't cause editors unnecessary aggravation with sloppy attention to this detail.
 * If both date and year are present, year takes precedence; note that  is ignored.


 * No disambiguation of years
 * If an over-achieving author has published more than one piece in a year (well, I guess journalists have to), disambiguation letters can be added to the year. Example.


 * Too much info
 * A shortened footnote should be short; don't include first names, the title, the month or day, the translator or any other extraneous information.


 * Illegal format
 * Missing a pipe (the vertical line used as a separator), or the  or   before the page number or location. (And if there is more than one page, use   please.)
 * {| class=wikitable


 * }
 * Multiple authors ignored
 * If more than one author is listed in your citation, they must be accounted for in the footnote. Simply adding "et al." does not invoke any sleight-of-hand. If there are more than four authors, you need only list the first four (in the same order); the system will display the first name plus "et al.".
 * }
 * Multiple authors ignored
 * If more than one author is listed in your citation, they must be accounted for in the footnote. Simply adding "et al." does not invoke any sleight-of-hand. If there are more than four authors, you need only list the first four (in the same order); the system will display the first name plus "et al.".
 * }
 * Multiple authors ignored
 * If more than one author is listed in your citation, they must be accounted for in the footnote. Simply adding "et al." does not invoke any sleight-of-hand. If there are more than four authors, you need only list the first four (in the same order); the system will display the first name plus "et al.".

False-positive errors
Because of some technical limitations of the templating engine (pertaining to the order of loading of scripts and other objects into the DOM), some footnotes will raise false-positive errors. These are most commonly seen in custom templates that wrap another cite template, such as EB1911 (Encyclopedia Britannica) or Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). The footnote functions as expected, but the page does end up on the error list.

The Trappist the monk script does not flag these errors. If you want to see the messages, install a bit of CSS into your wiki environment, as described in Method 3 on the page. All error messages will appear in red alongside the orange messages. If you see only a red message, it's probably a false-positive. These errors are most often dealt with by using the sfn whitelist template. Which is a story for another day.

Some footnote-adjacent templates
harvc, although not a footnote template per se, is considered part of the harv family. It is a sort of shortened citation that allows you to specify chapters or sections of a single work with multiple contributors.

This example is interesting because there is no accredited author or editor, but  requires the   parameter, which is usually an editor. Here the title stands in for the editor and its display is suppressed with. ( does not accept , so use it or lose it.)

Helpers to create a custom CITEREF in a citation template: or its alias. Used in the citation's  parameter...

Additional considerations
There should be no space between the footnote markup and the preceding word or punctuation. In the English wiki, punctuation (period, comma, semi-colon, etc.) is placed before the footnote template, not after.

A footnote should never point to a source in Further reading. "Further" implies "relevant to the subject but beyond the confines of this article." Move the citation to Sources or Works cited or whatever you've called the shelf where you put your active references.

The recommended order of sections after the article body is See also, Notes, References, Sources, Further reading, and External links, followed by navigation templates, Authority control and Categories. Notes, References and Sources can be combined under one heading, with sub-headings. The use of the heading "Bibliography" is discouraged ... [except a list of works by an author on that author's page ro a list of relevant works not referenced a la Further reading.] "Citations" ? (Missing manual says no.)