Help:Footnotes
From UgandaWiki: The Uganda Online Encyclopedia
Adapted from Wikipedia
A footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a document to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference for it, or both. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote.
We strongly encourage contributors to UgandaWiki to cite their sources of information using footnotes. One the main indications of a good article is how well it is sourced.
You can add a footnote to an article by writing your note within <ref> ... </ref> tags, as explained below.
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[edit] How to use
- Place a <ref> ... </ref> where you want a footnote reference number to appear in an article. Type the text of the note between the ref tags.
- Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article. The list of notes will be generated here.
This page itself uses footnotes, such as the one at the end of this sentence.[1] If you view the Wikicode of this page by clicking "edit", you can see a working example of footnotes.
[edit] Where to place ref tags
Place a ref tag at the end of the term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers.[2]
The ref tag should be directly after the punctuation mark without an intervening space,[2] in order to prevent the reference number wrapping to the next line.[2] The same is true for successive ref tags.[1][2] The exception is a dash[2]—which should follow the ref tag.
Example:
According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big;<ref>Miller, E: "The Sun.", page 23. Academic Press, 2005.</ref>
however, the moon is not so big.<ref>Smith, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 46(78):46.</ref>
== Notes ==
<references/>
[edit] Citing a footnote more than once
To give a footnote a unique identifier, use <ref name="name"> ... </ref>. You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. The name cannot be a number, or the system will return an error. The ref name need not be placed within inverted commas unless it consists of more than one word.
Only the first occurrence of text in a named ref will be used, although that occurrence may be located anywhere in the article. You can either copy the whole footnote, or you can use a terminated empty ref tag that looks like this: <ref name="name"/>.
In the following example, the same source is cited three times.
This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote.<ref name="multiple"/>
Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, if different statements come from the same source.<ref name="multiple">Remember that when you refer to the same footnote multiple times, the text from the first reference is used.</ref>
A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end.<ref name="multiple">This text is superfluous, and won't show up anywhere. We may as well just use an empty tag.</ref>
== Notes ==
<references/>
The text above gives the following result in the article (see also Notes section below):
This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote.[3] Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, when different statements come from the same source.[3] A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end.[3]
One should be particularly careful when deleting the first of multiple named references, because the footnote text will be deleted unless it is copied to the second (now first) ref tag.
[edit] Style recommendations
- Internal links should still be used as normal, like this: UgandaWiki.
- Wiki formatting such as bold, italics, and internal and external links work as normal within the text of your citation.
- Avoid using "Ibid" in footnotes. Other editors who add new references to the article may not take the time to correct Ibid references broken by their addition. Furthermore, not all readers are familiar with the meaning of the term. If a reference is reused in more than one footnote, it is preferable to use the format "Smith, 182" rather than "Ibid, 182", so as to avoid these problems.
