Wikipedia:Advanced footnote formatting: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:05, 16 April 2009

Revision as of 23:48, 18 April 2009

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{{essay}}

{{nutshell|Footnotes can be [[#Indenting and line-splitting|indented, line-split]] and shortened by [[#Deferring details|deferring details]] into the References or External links. Due to a WP quirk, the first footnote on a page cannot be indented.}}

The topic of '''advanced footnote formatting''' involves techniques of indentation and line-splitting, such as for long URL webpage names, when coding footnotes in an article. For example:

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(or picture element) is the smallest part of an image.</pre>

</code>

In the above example, each part of the ref-tag footnote is indented (3 spaces) from the left margin. Due to a Wikipedia quirk, the first footnote on a page cannot be indented, because it is treated as a quotebox.

There are numerous styles for displaying [[footnotes]] (or endnotes) in a Wikipedia article. There are also many predefined [[Wikipedia:Citation templates|footnote templates]], but with limitations, so (as of April 2009), footnotes also can be hand-formatted to best fit each article.

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For over 3 years, Wikipedia has used similar line-splitting of [[WP:Thinking outside the infobox|infobox]] coding, putting infobox template parameters on separate lines. Decades of usage has shown that leading vertical-bars ("|") are less error-prone than trailing vertical-bars placed at the end of a line. Because leading bars can be aligned down a column, they are more easily proofread than ending bars, which tend to zig-zag along a ragged right margin.

===Line splitting first footnote of page===

Because of the Wikipedia formatting quirk, the first footnote on a page is still typically treated as a quotebox (as of April 2009). However, the indentation can be simulated, by line-splitting with HTML comments, between all lines within &lt;ref>....&lt;/ref>:

<code><!--use code-style font-->

<pre> In [[digital imaging]], a pixel&lt;ref><!--

-->Rudolf F. Graf, ''Modern Dictionary of Electronics'',<!--

-->1999, Newnes, Oxford, page 569, ISBN 0-7506-43315,<!--

-->Google Books (''see below:'' References).&lt;/ref>

(or picture element) is the smallest part of an image.</pre>

</code>

The above line-splitting of the entire footnote text, into 3 lines, allows it to be coded as the first footnote of a page. Note that the first footnote might be in an infobox, that appears at the top of a page.

==Page numbers==

Line 61 ⟶ 74:

In the above example, the 3 footnotes are reduced to just short ref-name tags at first, then later expanded to show more details. However, they defer the extreme details for publisher, ISBN, and webpage-URL links to be contained as entries under "External links". Using that advanced method, no publisher names, ISBN numbers or long URL names appear in the upper article text for those 3 footnotes.

Each full footnote is coded within 3 lines of text, even though indented and pinpointing the page numbers. The tedious details are all deferred into the section "External links" (or "References") at the bottom of the article. That separation is possible by repeating the author name and title in each entry when listed in the bottom sections. So, full footnotes can become a 3-line indentation, rather than the typical 6 or 9-line blobs that clutter many articles.

==Advancement shock==