Wikipedia:Advanced footnote formatting: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:41, 27 December 2018

Revision as of 06:37, 4 August 2019

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{{Historical|brief=yes|comment=[[H:PREGROUP|Predefined grouping]], such as {{tl|efn}} and {{tl|notelist}}, is the currently preferred and recommended way of adding footnotes.}}

{{essay}}

{{nutshell|[[#Remote footnotes|Remote footnotes]] can be added for pronunciations or examples. Footnotes can be [[#Indenting and line-splitting|indented, line-split]] & shortened by [[#Deferring details|deferring details]] into References or External links. Due to a WP quirk, the 1st footnote on a page might not indent properly. Note each website and beware [[wp:BLACKLIST]] sites.}}

The topic of '''advanced footnote formatting'''^{[[#Notes|[essay] ]]} involves techniques for coding remote footnotes of pronunciations or examples, plus indentation and line-splitting. Many articles could use remote footnotes, such as explaining various ways some words are pronounced:

::The term "time dilation"^{[[#Notes|[p] ]]} refers to a slowing of elapsed duration.

::'''Notes'''<br><span style="font-size:89%">&nbsp; &nbsp;<small>[p]</small> – The word ''dilation'' is pronounced "dy-LAY-shun" and is the preferred term.</span>

The superscript <small>"[p]"</small> can be coded by just the short wikilink: <nowiki>^{[[#Notes|[p]&nbsp;]]}</nowiki>. The full, detailed content of that footnote text is not in the upper text of the article but, instead, is coded within the section named "Notes" (or "References"). See below: [[#Remote footnotes|Remote footnotes]] & [[#Footnotes within footnotes|Footnotes within footnotes]].

__TOC__

Also, indentation and line-splitting can be used, such as for long URL webpage names, when coding footnotes in an article. For example:

<pre>

In [[digital imaging]], a pixel<ref>

Rudolf F. Graf, ''Modern Dictionary of Electronics'',

1999, Newnes, Oxford, page 569, ISBN 0-7506-43315,

Google Books (''see below:'' References).</ref>

(or picture element) is the smallest part of an image.

</pre>

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 footnote templates (see [[WP:Citation templates]]), but with limitations, so (as of March 2012), footnotes also can be hand-formatted to best fit each article.

==Remote footnotes==

Many terms could use a remote footnote, not cluttering the upper text of page, such as for explaining pronunciations or showing some detailed examples: