Wikipedia:Advanced footnote formatting: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:54, 12 May 2018

Revision as of 20:38, 12 May 2018

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All 3 superscripts "[x]" are combined within the tags "<sup>" & "</sup>". Perhaps 20 remote footnotes could be coded in a similar manner, all linked to the section title named "Notes". For logical placement, the remote footnotes should be defined above the "<references/>" tag (or {{Reflist}} ) which displays the other, numbered ref-tag footnotes.

Although there are other methods to link named-footnotes, the use of the remote footnotes is a very simple method to allow dozens of special footnotes, without depending on complex wiki-features which might change next week. In this case, the term "advanced footnotes" also means: ''sophisticated enough to still work when Wikipedia is changed'' (as typically happens every monthfew months). Also, the coding of remote footnotes is likely to work on ''any'' other-language wikipedia or on any wiki website, as well.

===Footnotes within footnotes===

Remote footnotes can contain other remote footnotes, or include ref-tag footnotes. Also, any ref-tag footnote ("<ref>...</ref>") can contain a remote-footnote link, circumventing the 1015-year problem where a ref-tag footnote cannot contain another ref-tag footnote.

An example (of footnotes within footnotes) would be:

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Nested footnotes can be used to address several common issues that would tend to clutter the top-text of an article:

:* Dates differ: some sources give one date while others give another date, and a remote footnote could explain the reasons.

:* The fact is not so simple: September 11th is often the 12th in some specific later time zone, and could be noted.

:* Opinions differ: perhaps explain how the [[Hatfields and McCoys]] stated different views of events.

:* A pronunciation differs with local residents or slang, such as [[New Orleans|NOLA]] spoken as ''"[[Nawlins]]"'' or ''"New Orluns"'' or ''"New Orleens"'' (etc.), so a foonote could list them, plus link further footnote sources for each.

There is no limit to the nesting of remote footnotes within other footnotes.

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Note the above line-splitting of the 5-line URL (for the webpage in Google Books) uses the [[HTML]] comment tokens "&lt;!--" and "-->". Each part of the footnote coding is placed on a separate line, thereby allowing each part to be indented from the lefthand side. There must be no spaces added to the URL (which is a single string of characters where spaces are coded "%20"). Do not add spaces before "&lt;!--" or after "-->" within the URL. However, when splitting an ''italicized phrase'' or long wikilink ("<nowiki>[[xx xx xx]]</nowiki>"), consider putting a space after "-->" on the 2nd line.

Similar indentation has been used for many decades, as in coding for [[computer programming]], to visually separate sections of text. The indented lines typically reflect a lower-level of details (or lower-level of ''"[[abstraction]]"'' ) than the level of the outer lines. Indenting the footnote coding can help clarify sections of text that contain several footnotes, as is typical in large articles.

For over 414 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===