User:Jpacobb/Silr/generaldoc

Templates of the Silr (Short In-Line References) family do the same job as those of the Harvard System Colon Style together with the bibliographical counterparts, but are more 'user-friendly' in that they allow many unnamed parameters. "Clicking" on the in-line reference moves the reader to its bibliographical counterpart and the browser back-arrow allows one to return to reference.

Wikipedia exists for the benefit of its readers. Many of these will not be used to reading academic-style articles and the references inserted into the text will be an obstacle in that the eye has to jump over them. The traditional raised notes [xy] are disconcerting and the Harvard-style "author-date" can be inconveniently long. The inclusion of the year of publication in-line is often redundant in that only one work of the author is quoted in a given article and, in any case, in disciplines such as History, Theology, or Philosophy it bears no necessary relation to the date of the work itself. This can be very misleading for the non-specialist reader, especially as it is repeated in a prominent place in the bibliographical section. Furthermore, some works are best cited by acronym (such as ODCC for "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" rather than "Cross & Livingstone" which may soon become "Cross, Livingstone & SomeOneElse"), and in the case of ancient works published in many editions and translations, standard practice is an abbreviated title (e.g. Ad Diog.) followed by some sort of Book,chapter,section reference which common to all editions and translations.)

So far as editors are concerned, parameter names for the citation templates are long, complicated and inconsistent between templates. Using them is sufficiently complicated and time-consuming to mean that many editors simply stick to the easy html-type syntax.

SILR aims to overcome these disadvantages by: It also tries to be 'editor-friendly' in that the essential syntax has been kept as simple and short as possible, and in particular the problem of leading and trailing spaces with unnamed parameters has been obviated by trimming them.
 * 1) reducing to a minimum the visual distraction caused by in-line references.
 * 2) allowing unnamed parameters in all frequently used templates.
 * 3) eliminating the year parameter from the in-line reference, while allowing a freely chosen additional identifier.
 * 4) providing for reference by acronym.

Every effort has been made to maintain backward compatibility with the syntax of the various cite/citation templates. The resulting bibliographical information should be processable by bots, though this is not certain at the present.

Allows extended notes to be inserted into the text using the SILR style. The usual mark-up of a header plus must be inserted where the text of the note is to be displayed. The default groupname is 'n'.

Syntax:  

Biblical references: ; ;
These three templates provide for references to the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the "Deutero-canonical" or Old Testament Apocryphal books. For details see here

User:Jpacobb/Silrbib
This is the standard bibliographical counterpart to the in-line reference. As far as possible it follows the cite/citation parameters and allows a large number of variants. However, it has a quick form for single author works which accepts unnamed parameters.

Quick Form
In this case unnamed parameters can be passed as follows with the consequent saving of time and effort:
 *  

Care must be taken to supply blank parameters for any missing value or to use named variables after the omission, chiefly art(icle), ed(itor)(s) and suf(fix).

Full Syntax
Preferred parameters. Almost any parameter used in the cite book /citation group of templates should work.


 * last = Last-name of Author1
 * first = ''First-name(s) of Author1
 * last2 = Last-name of Author2
 * first2 = First-name(s) of Author2
 * last3 = Last-name of Author3
 * first3 = First-name(s) of Author3
 * last4 = Last-name of Author4
 * first4 = First-name(s) of Author4
 * last5 --> any value generates an et al.

(last5 through to last9 and associated firstx are handled in template but not shown on screen)
 * title = title of book/encyclopedia
 * [nb title is always that of the complete work, use art or contribution for the sub-unit]
 * suf = suffix additional identifier as in
 * loc = place of publication
 * pub = name of publisher
 * year = year of publication [can contain additional information such as (3rd ed.)]

If article in collection of some sort:
 * art/article = name of article (author-names are referred to this)
 * ed/eds/editor/editors = name(s) of editor(s) of book, encyclopaedia etc. as a formatted text or full syntax editorx type

ISBN numbers and similar
The insertion of the standard parameters should work, e.g. isbn= ..........

Edit Notice
The template User:Jpacobb/Silr used is available to warn editors the SILR system is being used on a page.