This template is used to create footnotes in Wikipedia, as an alternative and complement to the ‎<ref> tag. Because of a technical limitation, some of the standard Wikipedia markup elements that are often used in the article prose do not work within a set of ‎<ref>...‎</ref> tags, including but not limited to the pipe trick, template substitution and another "nested" set of ‎<ref>...‎</ref> tags. For example, the following does not work as expected:

  1. ‎<ref>[[Help:Footnotes|]]‎</ref> (Generates: [[Help:Footnotes|]] instead of a wikilink)
  2. ‎<ref>{{SUBST:TODAY}}‎</ref> (Generates: {{SUBST:TODAY}} instead of the date that the edit was made)
  3. ‎<ref>Explanatory footnote<ref>Citation</ref>‎</ref> (Generates: Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). </ref>)

Replacing the outermost ‎<ref>...‎</ref> set with {{Refn}} allows for the use of the markup elements listed above.

{{refn|group=groupname|name=name|Contents of the footnote}}

  • groupname: Groupname per WP:REFGROUP; if not specified, then the main and nested references will be rendered into the same reference list
  • name: Reference name per WP:REFNAME

Names for footnotes and groups must follow these rules:

  • Names are case-sensitive. Please do not use raNdOM capitalization.
  • Names must not be purely numeric; the software will accept something like ":31337" (which is punctuation plus a number), but it will ignore "31337" (purely numeric).
  • Names should have semantic value, so that they can be more easily distinguished from each other by human editors who are looking at the wikitext. This means that ref names like "Nguyen 2010" are preferred to names like ":31337".
  • Names must be unique. You may not use the same name to define different groups or footnotes. Try to avoid picking a name that someone else is likely to choose for a new citation, such as ":0" or "NYT".
  • Please consider keeping reference names simple and restricted to the standard English alphabet and numerals. If spaces are used, the following technical restrictions become relevant:
    • Quotation marks are preferred but optional if the only characters used are letters A–Z, a–z, digits 0–9, and the symbols !$%&()*,-.:;<@[]^_`{|}~. That is, all printable ASCII characters except #"'/=<>?\ and space.
    • Inclusion of any other characters, including spaces, requires that the reference name be enclosed in quotes; for example, name="John Smith". But quote-enclosed reference names may not include a less-than sign (<) or a double straight quote symbol ("), which may however be included by escaping as &lt; and &quot; respectively.
    • The quote marks must be the standard, straight, double quotation marks ("); curly or other quotes will be parsed as part of the reference name.
  • You may optionally provide reference names even when the reference name is not required. This makes later re-use of the sourced reference easier.

Footnotes with citations

ಬದಲಾಯಿಸಿ
Markup Renders as
An example.{{refn|group=note|name=first|A note.<ref>An included reference.</ref>}}
Another example.{{refn|group=note|Another note.<ref>Another included reference.</ref>}}
A third example.{{refn|group=note|The third note.<ref>The reference in the third note.</ref>}}
Repeating the first example.{{refn|group=note|name=first}}

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

An example.[note ೧] Another example.[note ೨] A third example.[note ೩] Repeating the first example.[note ೧]

Notes
  1. ೧.೦ ೧.೧ A note.[]
  2. Another note.[]
  3. The third note.[]
References
  1. An included reference.
  2. Another included reference.
  3. The reference in the third note.

The first example shows that substitution does not work in a regular ‎<ref>...‎</ref> tag (the accessdate does not appear correctly). The second example shows that the accessdate is substituted correctly within {{Refn}}.

Markup Renders as
<ref>{{cite web |accessdate={{Subst:TODAY}} |title=Languages |work=Apache HTTP Server |agency=Ohloh |publisher= Black Duck Software |url=https://www.ohloh.net/p/apache/analyses/latest/languages_summary}}</ref>
{{reflist}}

[]

  1. "Languages". Apache HTTP Server. Black Duck Software. Ohloh. Retrieved {{Subst:TODAY}}. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |template doc demo= ignored (help)
{{refn|{{cite web |accessdate={{Subst:TODAY}} |title=Languages |work=Apache HTTP Server |agency=Ohloh |publisher= Black Duck Software |url=https://www.ohloh.net/p/apache/analyses/latest/languages_summary}}}}
{{reflist}}

[]

  1. "Languages". Apache HTTP Server. Black Duck Software. Ohloh. Retrieved 4 April 2014.

If the reference or note content is missing, then "Cite error: Invalid ‎<ref> tag; refs with no name must have content." will be displayed.

List defined references

ಬದಲಾಯಿಸಿ

Currently, this template may not be used more than once within list-defined references. Doing so will result in Cite errors; see bug 20707http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20707.

Group name Reference list template In-text citation template
{{Reflist}}
{{Reflist}} {{Refn}} for nested references
lower-alpha {{Notelist}} {{Efn}}
upper-alpha {{Notelist-ua}} {{Efn-ua}}
lower-roman {{Notelist-lr}} {{Efn-lr}}