Help:Shortened footnotes

Template:Wikipedia how to Shortened footnotes, also called shortened citations, are one method of citing sources for a Wikipedia article. They are a hybrid of standard footnotes and Harvard-style parenthetical referencing. Shortened footnotes, often with page numbers, appear in the reference section (wherever the reference list markup {{reflist}} is placed) and usually link (by {{Sfn}}) to the full citation for a source. These full citations usually appear in another list separate from the footnotes. See rationale below.

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

Rationale

Shortened footnotes are used for several reasons:

Multiple references: (a) They allow the editor to cite many different parts of the same source without having to repeat the entire citation.
Easier source-editing: (b) When full citations are gathered in a separate section the article text is uncluttered and easier to work with.
Single place for citations: (c) It is easier to edit all the full citations at once.
Other: (d) The full citations can be sorted or alphabetized.

Overview

The most common method of using shortened footnotes is with the {{sfn}} template for the shortened footnotes, and Template:Cite xxx templates for the full citation. The Citation Style 1 and Template:Cs2 templates automatically create an anchor for an {{sfn}} link, using the author last name and the year. An "anchor" is a landing place for a link to jump to. In the following example, an inline citation such as ^[1] links to the shortened footnote under "Notes", which in turn links to the full citation in the References list:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

How to create shortened footnotes

Using {{sfn}}

There are several ways to create the shortened footnote. Most often, the {{sfn}} template is used to link to a full citation with simple markup:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

The link is normally created from the authors' last names and the year of publication. For sources with multiple authors, pass their last names (to a maximum of four) as multiple parameters to the template:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]

The {{sfnp}} template works the same as the above example, except it places the date in parentheses:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Using {{harvnb}}

The {{sfn}} template was developed to automate the older process of placing {{harvnb}} within <ref> tags. This method is still available and used in many existing articles:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

The above method will also work with other "harv" templates.Template:Efn-lr These templates link to the full citation in the same way and accept the same parameters, but they each have slightly different formatting. For example, {{harvp}} places the date in parentheses:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Manual creation

You can manually create a link to the long citation by creating a custom reference anchor or concatenating #CITEREF, the author's last name, and the publication year.Template:Efn-lr This is rarely used:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

You can also place an unlinked shortened footnote within <ref> tags:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Bundling citations

Further information: Wikipedia:Citing sources#Bundling citations and Help:Citation merging

The {{sfnm}} template supports the inclusion of multiple sources in a single footnote. The {{harvnb}} template or other similar templates can be manually bundled in a single footnote, separated either with semicolons or the {{multiref}} template:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]

List of footnotes

The list of footnotes is created by using the {{reflist}} template or the <references /> tag. Some articles that use only shortened footnotes manually define narrower columns at {{reflist|20em}}. References created via {{sfn}}, {{sfnp}}, {{sfnm}}, the standard <ref /> tags, and list-defined references will all be included in the same list.

Linking

The full citations are usually created with Citation Style 1 (CS1) and Citation Style 2 (CS2) templates. These templates automatically create a linkable anchor from the authors' last names and the year of publication. For example:

{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |date=November 16, 1972 |title=[[Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses]]}}

allows a "short" citation template, like {{sfn|Elk|1972}} in the article.

The anchor can be created manually with {{sfnref}} or {{harvid}} in situations where the automatic anchors would create issues including:

Multiple authors with the same last name
No known last name for the author
Unusual characters in the author field
Multiple works in the same year by the same author
Year of publication unknown

For example, an article might cite psychoanalysts Anna Freud and Sigmund Freud. If there are two full citations with the same last name and the same year of publication, as below, then the full citations would need to set custom anchors in the |ref= parameter. The shortened citation can then be created using the same structure. Note the identical parameters for {{sfnref}} and {{sfn}}:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Citations templates outside of CS1 and CS2, like vcite templates, {{Cite court}}, and {{cite comic}}, may require the |ref= parameter. In rare cases, {{wikicite}} can be used to manually create the anchors for full citations written without templates. In the following example from the Bengal famine of 1943, an unpublished but publicly available manuscript by the Indian Government’s Regional Food Commissioner, is used as a primary source. As there are few acceptable places on Wikipedia to use unpublished memoirs as a source, no citation template directly matches the document:

{{wikicite | ref = "{{sfnref|Braund |1944}}" | reference = Braund, H. B. L. (1944). ''Famine in Bengal'', typescript. British Library Doc D792.}}

References list

Full citations in the references list may be formatted manually or with citation templates. 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.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Date

The shortened citation should include only the year. The full citation may include the year only or the full date in the |date= parameter. Most citation templates will extract the year from a full date to form the anchor.

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

{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses |date=November 16, 1972a}}
{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=Anne Elk's Further Theory on Brontosauruses |date=December 20, 1972b}}

If the date is written in YYYY-MM-DD format, you can suffix a lowercase letter in the |year= parameter:

{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses |date=1972-11-16 |year=1972a}}
{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=Anne Elk's Further Theory on Brontosauruses |date=1972-12-20 |year=1972b}}

No author

Template:Excerpt

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]

Explanatory notes

Shortened footnotes can be placed inside explanatory notes in several ways. Explanatory or content notes add explanations, comments, or other information relating to the main content and often require their own citation. There are two technical approaches to using both types of footnotes. A shortened footnote can be placed inside an explanatory note; on Wikipedia, this is referred to as a nested footnote. There are also several ways to combine the contents of a shortened citation and explanatory note within a single footnote.

Nesting footnotes is typically done with the {{efn}} or {{refn}} templates. Because of a technical limitation, some standard Wikipedia markup elements will not work within a set of <ref>...</ref> tags, including a second "nested" set of <ref>...</ref> tags. For example, <ref>Explanatory footnote<ref>Brown 2001</ref></ref> will generate an error.^{[lower-roman 1]} Because the templates allow nesting, the same example written as {{efn|Explanatory footnote{{sfn|Brown|2001}} }} works as expected.

Nested footnotes

The methods in this section can nest footnotes because the explanatory notes use templates designed to support nesting.

Nesting within {{efn}}

This method uses {{efn}} to create the explanatory notes and {{sfn}} to create footnotes nested in the explanatory notes.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Nesting within {{refn}}

This method uses {{refn}} to create the explanatory notes and {{sfn}} to create footnotes nested in the explanatory notes.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Combined footnotes

Explanatory notes containing shortened citations

This example creates a separate notes section using the {{sfn}} and {{efn}} templates. Because the explanatory footnotes do not contain footnote references, there are no technical hurdles.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

When the explanatory notes and shortened footnotes are separate and not nested, they can still be created using standard reference tags. This example creates a separate notes section by using <ref> and <ref group=>.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

The example below uses only basic wikitext syntax and single list of footnotes. Because the explanatory footnotes do not contain footnote references, there are no technical hurdles.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Explanatory notes containing parenthetical citations

This method uses {{sfn}} to create the main footnotes, {{efn}} to create the explanatory notes and {{harv}} to create the parenthentical references in the explanatory notes. The use of inline parenthetical referencing has been deprecated for an article's body text.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

List-defined explanatory notes containing citations

This method uses {{sfn}} to create the main footnotes, {{efn}} to create list-defined explanatory notes using {{notelist}} in the "Notes" appendix, and {{harv}} to create links nested within the explanatory notes:

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]

Errors

Errors involving <ref> 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 shortened citation that does not link to the full citation and to create full citations that do not have a matching shortened citations. Often the link and anchor may not match for some reason. To catch these errors, use the User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors script. When an shortened citation 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 shortened footnote, resulting in invalid HTML. See Help:Markup validation for help in validating and resolving issues.

Examples

These featured articles exemplify the use of shortened footnotes:

Method	Example
{{sfn}} for linked shortened footnotes	Actuary (2023)
{{harvnb}} for linked shortened footnotes	Hoxne Hoard (2023)
Manually created links	Rosetta Stone (2023)
Manually created anchors	Battle of the Nile (2023)
Un-linked shortened footnotes	The Raven (2023)

This article illustrates improperly implemented shortened footnotes:

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (14:53, February 22, 2012)

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.

Notes

Template:Notelist-lr

Cite error: <ref> tags exist for a group named 'lower-roman', but no corresponding <references group='lower-roman'/> tag was found

[lower-roman 1]