Help talk:Footnotes

Substitution

How does <ref group=lower-alpha> render

There's a line of LUA code in Module:Citation that checks for this special value, and the others, and treats them specially. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:03, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Ah, that's too bad. I wonder if there's any way to do it without Lua... Thanks anyhow! 2602:306:36D8:9560:C136:1D60:F269:3F3F (talk) 16:12, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

It's not Module:Citation at all: it's the Cite.php extension, see H:PREGROUP and Help:Cite link labels. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Redrose64 is correct. See Cite if you want to go through the code. --  Gadget850 ^talk 19:37, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I have an allied problem. What I want is group=XX on all the <ref>s , then {{reflist|group=XX|liststyle=lower-alpha}}. But although the actual reflist has lower alpha, the associated refs still have decimal – [XX 1] etc rather than [XX a] -- Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sat 22:46, wikitime= 14:46, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Not a related issue. The short answer is to use {{efn}} and {{notelist}}. --  Gadget850 ^talk 15:54, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

@Unbuttered Parsnip: The |group= and |liststyle= (n.b. not list-style) parameters of {{reflist}} are intimately related and mutually exclusive; they're not intended for use together (if you try using both, |group= is ignored). You can use <ref group=lower-alpha>...</ref> with {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:25, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: That's what I figured – what I would call an "undocumented non-feature". Definitely undocumented. I don't quite see why those two functions should be bound together, and as I'm demonstrating, they didn't ought to be. Never mind, back to Plan A (regular listing jumbled up with the rest). -- Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sun 07:18, wikitime= 23:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

@Unbuttered Parsnip: Please note that although you used {{ping|Redrose64}}, your post didn't send me a notification. This is because your signature uses indirect links - if you remove both instances of :en: it should work as intended. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:50, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@Unbuttered Parsnip and Redrose64:

Long answer:

• If |group= is set to one of the predefined styles (upper-alpha, upper-roman, lower-alpha, lower-greek or lower-roman) then the list style is set. <ref> must use the same group.
• If |liststyle= is set then it is explicitly used for the list style, and |group= must be set separately.
• If |liststyle= is set to other than one of the predefined styles, then the <ref> tags can not be styled to match.
• Thus, |liststyle= is really not useful. It isn't documented on this help page, only at {{reflist}}. We need to work on the {{reflist}} documentation.
• H:PREGROUP is the primary documentation for using predefined groups. Using the templates will eliminate confusion.

--  Gadget850 ^talk 10:50, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Clarification: You can use |group= and |liststyle= together. If you set |group=note and |liststyle=lower-roman then the in-text cites will show as and the reference list will be styled as:

i. ^{^} Citation

I don't see that as useful, but it is in use in 159 articles. (search articles) --  Gadget850 ^talk 14:41, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I have updated the {{reflist}} documentation. Do we really want to document |liststyle= here? As I recall, that parameter was added before we added the predefined groups. --  Gadget850 ^talk 13:31, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Can the editor's preprocessor detect duplicate references?

I was editing A Rape on Campus and came across a case where someone had reused a ref name, which caused a source to point to the wrong article. Can this be detected and produce an error message? Note that the implementation would need to check the whole article, because someone might edit just one section, so you can't just scan the text submitted from the edit window. Dingsuntil (talk) 10:42, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, with RefToolbar. Select the Cite button, then Error Check. -- Gadget850 ^talk 10:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. However, what I'm asking is essentially whether we can have this run every time anyone makes an edit, or at least an edit which modifies references. Dingsuntil (talk) 15:17, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Use quote once in repeated citation (without using sfn)

I find short footnotes cumbersome and use Template:Rp to show page numbers on repeated citations. Is there a way to use a named reference multiple times (in my case about 2-4 times...not an excessive amount), but only include a quote in one location (without converting the entire article to use short footnotes)? AHeneen (talk) 18:42, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Help:Explanatory notes

I will be deleting User:Gadget850/Help:Explanatory notes in a few weeks. If anyone want to do anything with it, do so. -- Gadget850 ^talk 10:28, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Help please

Hi there, sorry if this not the appropriate forum, feel free to point me to one.

I can't get footnotes to work on an article. I saved an interim version here. Could you please help? For bonus points, I'd like to use numerals instead of latin letters. Thanks. 87.112.180.82 (talk) 07:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Your definition of the "cursive" footnote didn't work because the footnote text contained an equals sign. This problem affects all templates, not just {{efn}}. The usual workaround is to add 1= at the start of the text: {{efn|name=cursive|1=Lowercase...}}. A better workaround in your case would be to remove the span tags that specify a list of fonts, as Wikipedia articles should not be guessing what fonts a reader has installed. The documentation at {{efn}} shows the available numbering styles. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:03, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! It worked. Now I can't change to numerical notes though. Here's my attempt. As you can see, an earlier <ref> gets dragged in for some reason... 87.112.180.82 (talk) 08:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh yes, to do that you'll have to set the group name explicitly on the {{refn}} calls and the {{reflist}}; something like |group=tablenote. But I suggest you stick with letters; why have two footnotes both called "1"? -- John of Reading (talk) 09:05, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks but I couldn't get it to work with another list of numbers, I'm forced to use the group name. Let's stick to letters indeed.

I just tried to add a new note. Another pathetic failure. Any help appreciated, thanks. 87.112.180.82 (talk) 23:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

This is the same as the first problem: the note named "cursived" contained equals signs and a list of font names. To make it work you either need to add 1= or to remove the span tags. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:59, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

D'oh! Sorry, and thanks for your help + patience. We could do with a more helpful error message there... hard to fix I guess. 87.112.180.82 (talk) 07:09, 2 December 2015 (UTC)