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The most common use of footnotes in Wikipedia articles is to provide inline citations to reliable sources, although footnotes can also be used for other purposes. The use of tags is not required by any policy or guideline, and other systems of inline citation, including parenthetical referencing, may be used . However, tags are by far the most popular system for inline citations.
This page concerns technical methods for creating footnotes. Only certain types of material on the English Wikipedia are required to have an inline citation to a reliable source. There is no requirement to provide a citation for every sentence, because multiple sentences may be supported by the same footnote. For advice on which material should be cited, see (minimum requirements for all articles), the Good article criteria (for Good articles), and When to cite (for Featured articles). For advice on how to organize and format bibliographic citations to reliable sources, see Citing sources and Citation template examples.
Footnote markers are generated using tags. The list of footnotes is generated using the tag, or the corresponding template, placed in the editable text at the point where the footnotes are to appear. The text of a footnote is placed between opening and closing tags, either at the point where the footnote marker is to appear, or within the element. If the page contains footnote markers but no footnote list, a red cite error message will appear.
This will create a footnote marker (automatically numbered). The footnote text itself will appear in the footnote list, generated as described below. If there is no footnote list markup, a red warning message will appear, reminding you to write the markup that generates the list.
You can include formatting and links in a footnote in the usual way, although certain features, such as the pipe trick and template substitution, will not work in footnotes. For the formatting of references, citation templates, such as a generic , or more specific , , etc., are available, although many editors prefer not to use them. See for details on how references can be structured.
If a footnote contains a link to an external site, and the link contains some non-displaying characters, it may not display correctly. In particular, a line break (carriage return) embedded in the descriptive text will affect display. This may happen if the description is pasted from a source with line breaks, and is particularly difficult to find if the hard break is inserted where it happens to be at the end of a line on the edit screen. Example: this footnote is formatted correctly Wikipedia main page. Example with no line break. This is formatted identically (with different wording), but has an embedded line break after "page."[http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia main page.
Example to demonstrate effect of embedded line break]. These footnotes display as:
To aid readability in the edit window, a single newline can be added after the closing tag before continuing with the text of the paragraph. This has the same effect as putting a space after the closing tag.
A footnote is named using the attribute of the tag. Choose a name (such as "Perry"), and then at one of the footnote marker points (it makes sense to choose the first), enter the footnote like this:
Then you can create another identical marker linking to the same footnote from any other point in the text, by entering the following (note the final slash):
Note that when Shortened footnotes are employed (using to create footnotes under and to create explanatory notes under ) then naming is not required because identical footnote markers are automatically identified and consolidated into a single footnote.
A commonly used alternative, which includes some formatting, is the template:
This template has parameters available for splitting the list into columns, and for controlling their width. For example, puts the list of footnotes into two columns. (For more options, see the .)
The footnote list must be inserted on the page below (after) all the footnote markers.
If the page has markup to generate a footnote list, but there are no footnote markers on the page, the list will simply appear as a blank line. No warning or error message is displayed.
This can also be done using the template with a parameter:
The references will appear numbered in the order that they are referred to in the text, regardless of how they are ordered within the reflist/references template. References which are list-defined but unused (that is, are not in the text) will show a cite error message.
If it becomes necessary to convert references from the list-defined to the inline format or vice versa, the page Converting between references formats documents procedures for doing so.
Clicking on a numbered superscript takes you straight to the text of the corresponding footnote. (The item is not a footnote marker; it is produced by the template, used to indicate a point where a reference ought to be provided.)
The tag or template is expanded to show the text of the footnotes against their corresponding numbers, like this:
For single-reference footnotes, clicking on the caret takes you back to the footnote marker in the main text. For multiple-reference footnotes, the links back to the main text are distinguished by letter superscripts . Clicking on a letter superscript takes you to the corresponding marker in the main text.
You can insert a into the edited section temporarily and remove it before saving; you will still not be able to see named references which were defined in other sections.
Tools that can be used are the Anomie/ajaxpreview.js script or the wikEd gadget.
The in-text footnote is defined using one of the group names, for example:
The reference list is invoked using with the group name. The group name must not be enclosed by quotes. For example:
Issues
In this example, the reference list markup is unclosed and the reference list is repeated in the two subsequent lists and the third in-text footnote number is rendered incorrectly:
To prevent this and close references so that they are not rendered incorrectly, the reference list markup must include any parameter, such as , or a column parameter. If parameters are not desired, a dummy parameter may be used, by convention . For example:
The may be used to nest references. The markup is:
Where may include tags. The and are optional, but must come after . If the is not specified, then the main and nested references will be rendered into the same reference list. Attempting to use #tag:ref more than once within list-defined references will result in a cite error.
Example:
The syntax of #tag:ref is not obvious, as parameters must come after the content; may be used in place of the markup.
A This example uses standard footnotes with all citations and explanatory notes in a single Notes sections:
B This example uses Shortened footnotes with a References section and combines explanatory notes and citations in a Notes section:
C This example uses list-defined references mixed with explanatory notes.
D This example uses list-defined references and creates a separate notes section by using group names.
For example:
When using list-defined references, can be used for the same style of in-text page references.
References
