Help:Shortened footnotes

Shortened footnotes are a hybrid of standard footnotes and parenthetical referencing (Harvard). They use in-text cites that link to a shortened reference in a list and a separate full reference list. The shortened reference may link to the full reference.

Shortened footnotes are used for several reasons: they allow the editor to cite many different pages of the same source without having to copy the entire citation; they avoid the inevitable clutter when citations are inserted into the source text; they bring together all the full citations into a coherent block of markup rather than being strewn throughout the text which allows the list to be alphabetized and makes it easier to edit all the full citations at once.

Please read Help:Footnotes first, as this guide builds upon the methods described there.

Overview
In this short example, note that an in-text cite such as links to the shortened citation in the Notes list, which in turn links to the long citation in the References list:

{{markup The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch.{{sfn|Praline|1969|p=12}} Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians.{{sfn|Praline|1969|p=16}}
 * The brontosaurus is thin at one end.{{sfn|Elk|1972|p=5}} Then it becomes much thicker in the middle.{{sfn|Elk|1972|p=6}}

In-text cite
The in-text cite can be created using standard tags containing the shortened citation, but this will not link to the long citation:

You can manually create a link to the long citation:

Using the sfn template allows linking with simplified markup and has parameters to include page numbers:

The sfnp template places the date in parenthesis:

The sfnm template supports the inclusion of multiple sources in a single footnote.

Before sfn was developed, harvnb or a similar template was used in tags:


 * This method is still in place in many articles. Templates in this series include harvnb, harv, harvtxt, harvcoltxt, harvcol and harvcolnb: the differences are in the use of parenthesis and colons; see Harvard citation documentation.

The link is normally created from the authors' last names and the year of publication.

Notes list
The Notes list is created by using reflist. When only shortened footnotes are used, then will show the list in an appropriate number of columns. Where shortened and long footnotes are mixed, use.

References list
Citations in the References list are usually created with a citation template. When linking is desired between the shortened and long citations, the citation template must create an anchor. When using citation, an anchor is always created. When using one of the Citation Style 1 templates, the anchor must be enabled using the ref parameter. By setting harv the anchor is automatically created from the author last name and the year of publication:

In many cases, there is no author, therefore the link and anchor must be created in a different manner. For example:



Here the in-text cite can be created as:

And the anchor for the citation created with sfnref:

Formatting
The reference list is formatted by placing the citations in an unordered list using the * markup. Entries may be sorted by the author's last name. The text size may be formatted with refbegin and refend. The references list is normally displayed in one column with no indenting.



Date
The in-text cite should include only the year. The full citation may include the year only or the full date. Most citation templates will extract the year from a full date to form the anchor. If both a date and a year are included, then the date is displayed, but the anchor is formed from the year.

If an author has multiple works in the same year, regardless of whether is a full date or only a year, then duplicate anchors will be generated. To resolve this, suffix the year with an alpha character. For example:



No author
Some sources do not have a single author with a last name, such as a magazine article or a report from a government institution. Options include:


 * For a newspaper or periodical, use the name of the publication and the date.
 * For a publication by an institution, use the name of the institution.
 * Some style guides recommend using the title of the article (title-date).
 * Other style guides recommend using "Anonymous" or "Anon."

Explanatory notes
Explanatory or content notes are used to add explanations, comments or other additional information relating to the main content but would make the text too long or awkward to read. Such notes may include supporting references.

Shortened footnotes mixed with explanatory notes
{{markup
 * The Sun is pretty big. But the Moon is not so big. The Sun is also quite hot.

Shortened footnotes with separate explanatory notes
This example creates a separate notes section by using group names.

{{markup
 * The Sun is pretty big. But the Moon is not so big.  The Sun is also quite hot.

Shortened footnotes with separate explanatory notes with references
This method uses sfn to create the main footnotes, refn to create the explanatory notes and sfn to create footnotes in the explanatory notes.

{{markup
 * The Sun is pretty big.{{sfn|Miller|2005|p=23}}{{refn|group=lower-alpha|But Miller points out that the Sun is not as large as some other stars.{{sfn|Miller|2005|p=23}}}} But the Moon{{refn|group=lower-alpha|The Moon goes by other names, such as Selena.{{sfn|Brown|2001|p=63}}}} is not so big.{{sfn|Brown|2001|p=46}}{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Historically the Moon was not always considered to be large.}} The Sun is also quite hot.{{sfn|Smith|2005|p=334}}

Errors
Errors involving tags will be automatically displayed in article, user, template, category, help and file pages. To show error messages on talk and other pages, see Help:Reference display customization.

It is very possible to create an in-text cite that does not link to the full citation and to create full citations that do not have a matching in-text cite. Often the link and anchor may not match for some reason. To catch these errors, use the User:Ucucha/HarvErrors script. When an in-text cite does not have a matching full citation and cannot be readily resolved, then it can be tagged with Citation not found.

It is also possible to create duplicate ids for the in-text cite, resulting in invalid HTML. See Help:Markup validation for help in validating and resolving issues.

Examples
These articles exemplify the use of shortened footnotes:
 * ; uses manually crafted short citations in tags
 * ; uses sfn

These articles illustrate improperly implemented shortened footnotes:
 * The article uses sfn (#10, 11, 12) to point to Rothenburg1976, which is a manually defined citation with no anchor (#9); the footnotes and shortened footnotes are mixed.
 * The article uses sfn (#10, 11, 12) to point to Rothenburg1976, which is a manually defined citation with no anchor (#9); the footnotes and shortened footnotes are mixed.

sfn template use notes
Sfn} and variant templates form the link from the author last name and the year. Up to four authors are supported, for example,. The full citation must create an anchor that matches the sfn link. templates use harv to create the anchor; always creates the anchor. An "anchor" is a landing place for a link to jump to. It is automatically created by/from certain parameters in the full citation template.