Help talk:Footnotes

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)

Unfortunately, by the time that error detection becomes possible, the MediaWiki template parser has already split the parameter at the first equals sign, into what it thinks is the param name and its value. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:03, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Do ref names with apostrophes require quotation marks?

WP:REFNAME implies that a ref name with an apostrophe in it requires quotation marks, but such references appear to work fine and do not generate an error message. Can someone clarify this situation?

See this discussion for more detail. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:08, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Have a look at my sandbox (permalink). It looks as if the software has ignored the reference name entirely; references 2 and 3 have not been combined. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: If in doubt, quote it. It doesn't do any harm. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:44, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

John of Reading's sandbox shows me that the software does not handle ref names with apostrophes correctly. If that is the case, then (a) the documentation at WP:REFNAME is incomplete and (b) we should have some sort of error detection for reference names that are malformatted. I'm happy to change the documentation, but how do we make the error detection happen? What part of the MediaWiki software or the en.WP configuration would need to change? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:36, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Quotes in Reference name - new?

All of a sudden I am seeing these annoying quote marks in my reference names again. Can these be permanently not used again. They were blessedly missing for a very long time. They are very unnecessary in my opinion. Not sure why they are making an unwelcome comeback. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Can you please link to an example to show us what is bothering you? Quotation marks around reference names are the recommended format, as you can see at WP:REFNAME. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:38, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

The quotes all of a sudden re-appeared after being blessedly missing. The only example I could provide is a ref name in quotes. It's totally annoying. The ref names work without quotes, the quotes are obviously unnecessary, so why use them? It's just one more opportunity for a typo, adding superfluous text. -- BrillLyle (talk) 23:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)