Template:Shortened_footnote_template

Template:Sfn

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This template is used on approximately 165,000 pages.
To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Redirect

{{sfnnb}}

This template uses Lua:

The shortened footnote template {{sfn}} creates a short author–date citation in a footnote, with a one-directional link to the first matching citation template on the same page. It will combine identical footnotes automatically.

{{sfn}} is designed to be used to create shortened footnotes, a citation style which pairs a short, author-date citation in a footnote with a complete citation in the references section at the end of the article (see example below). This citation style is used to reduce clutter in the edit window and to combine multiple citations to the same source.

Common problems and known workarounds are given in the section possible issues section below.

There are several other templates that are designed for use with shortened footnotes. They differ slightly in the way they format the author-date citation and how much of their functionality is automated. A full list of these related templates is below.

Note that the use (or even non-use) of these templates is an element of citation "style", and adding or removing them in articles with an established style should be consistent with that style. See WP:CITEVAR.

Usage

sfn generates an "author-date" style short-cite from the following parameters:

{{sfn | <last1*> | <last2> | <last3> | <last4> | <year*> | p= <page> | loc= <location> }}

with

<last1> – required; surname of first author or corporate author
<last2>–<last4> – positional parameters; surnames of next three authors; required if available in the full citation
<year> – required; four-digit year; may have a lowercase disambiguation letter, like 2012a
|p= – specific page referenced in the source (alias: |page= )
|pp= – comma-separated list of individual pages and / or range(s) of pages referenced in the source (alias: |pages= )
|loc= – in-source location when |p= and |pp= are inappropriate; may be used to supplement |p= and |pp=; information such as a section or figure number.

Typical usage is shown in the example below. The text and the footnote are connected by a bi-directional link – clicking on the superscript takes the reader to the footnote, clicking on the footnote number takes them back to the superscript. The clicking on the short citation takes them to the full citation in the references section.

Template sfn is not placed inside <ref>...</ref> tags and generates the footnote internally. (To place sfn in a footnote, see putting a citation inside a footnote, below.)

More information Markup, Renders as ...

Parameters

Possible issues

Other author–date citation templates

There are several templates used to create short citations; they differ in the use and placement of parentheses, in the separator before the page or location, and in whether a terminal full stop (period) is present:

More information Templates, Aliases ...

Full citations can be created manually or by templates:

Citation Style 1 templates
{{citation}}

All of these templates have the same parameters and basic functionality. This page describes all of them except the parameters of {{sfnm}} and {{harvs}}; please see their documentation pages. Editors editing one of these templates are requested to make parallel changes to the other versions.

Applications of these templates

Implementation notes

These templates use two elements: a wikilink in the body of the article, and an anchor in the reference section of the article. Clicking on the wikilink repositions the page at the anchor.

Using CITEREF directly

Shortcut

WP:CITEREF

A few articles create a custom ID using CITEREF, either in place of the Harvard citation template (e.g. [[#CITEREFSmith2006|(2006)]]) or as a value for |ref= in the citation template. A custom ID 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 short, 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 < and " respectively.
If CITEREF is used, then spaces in the |ref= field must be replaced with underscores
- 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.

Examples:

{{sfn|cite name|year}}
{{cite book|ref=CITEREFcite_nameyear}}
{{cite book|ref={{sfnref}}}}

Where cite_name is a name such as the publisher.

To avoid the sometimes difficult to remember syntax for links to CITEREF anchors, {{citeref}} can be used to create internal wikilinks with either small superscript-style labels (like this^[n]) or plain free-text labels to such anchors. It can be used inside of other citations.

Note that the CITEREF prefix is necessary for the reference tooltips gadget (MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js) to detect that a link goes to a citation.

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Sfn/doc.
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox and testcases pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Template:Shortened_footnote_template, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[FOOTNOTESmith202025-1] [1]
Smith 2020, p. 25.

[FOOTNOTESmith202026-2] [2]
Smith 2020, p. 26.

[FOOTNOTESmith202025-3] [1]
Smith 2020, p. 25.

[FOOTNOTESmithJones202025-4] [1]
Smith & Jones 2020, p. 25.

[FOOTNOTESmithJonesBrown202025-5] [1]
Smith, Jones & Brown 2020, p. 25.

[FOOTNOTESmithJonesBrownBlack202025-6] [1]
Smith et al. 2020, p. 25.

[FOOTNOTESmith202025-7] [1]
Smith 2020, p. 25.

[FOOTNOTESmith2020chpt._3-8] [1]
Smith 2020, chpt. 3.

[FOOTNOTESmith2020section_7-9] [1]
Smith 2020, section 7.

[10] [1]
Smith 2011, p. 2: "A quote verifying the information."

[11] [1]
Smith (2011, p. 2) quoted in Jones (2010, p. 343)

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Markup	Renders as
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2020\|p=25}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith 2020, p. 25.
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|Jones\|2020\|p=25}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith & Jones 2020, p. 25.
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|Jones\|Brown\|2020\|p=25}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith, Jones & Brown 2020, p. 25.
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|Jones\|Brown\|Black\|2020\|p=25}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith et al. 2020, p. 25.

Markup	Renders as
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2020\|p=25}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith 2020, p. 25.
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2020\|loc=chpt. 3}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith 2020, chpt. 3.
{{sfn\|Smith\|2020\|loc=section 7}}	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith 2020, section 7.

Markup	Renders as
{{harv\|Smith\|2011\|loc=[https://en.wikipedia.org chpt. 3]}}	(Smith 2011, chpt. 3)
{{harv\|Smith\|2011\|loc=[https://en.wikipedia.org §7]}}	(Smith 2011, §7)
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2011\|p=[https://en.wikipedia.org 3]}} ==Notes== {{reflist}} ==References== * {{cite book \| last = Smith \| date = 2011 \| title = Smith's other book }}</syntaxhighlight>	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 2011, p. 3. References Smith (2011). Smith's other book.

Markup	Renders as
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2011\|ps=none}} == Notes == {{reflist}}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 2011
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2011}} == Notes == {{reflist}}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 2011.

Templates	Aliases	Example
`{{Harvard citation no brackets}}`	`{{harvnb}}`	Smith 2006, p. 25
`{{Harvard citation}}`	`{{harv}}`	(Smith 2006, p. 25)
`{{Harvard citation text}}`	`{{harvtxt}}`	Smith (2006, p. 25)
`{{Harvcoltxt}}`		Smith (2006:25)
`{{Harvcol}}`		(Smith 2006:25)
`{{Harvcolnb}}`		Smith 2006:25
`{{Harvard citations}}`	`{{harvs}}`	John Smith (2006, 2007) (and many other forms).
`{{Harvp}}`		Smith (2006), p. 25
`{{Harvc}}`	`{{Citec}}`	(Cite several contributions/chapters in a larger work) Article text.^[1] More article text.^[2] Even more article text.^[3] References [1] Stout & Johnson 1957. [2] Wadleigh 1957. [3] Stefferud 1957 Sources Stefferud, Alfred, ed. (1957). Soil: The Yearbook of Agriculture 1957. United States Department of Agriculture. OCLC 704186906. Stefferud, A. Preface. In Stefferud (1957). Stout, P. R.; Johnson, C. M. "Trace Elements". In Stefferud (1957). Wadleigh, C. H. "Growth of Plants". In Stefferud (1957).
`{{Shortened footnote template}}`	`{{sfn}}`	Article text.^[1] [1] Smith 2006, p. 25.
`{{Sfnp}}`		Article text.^[1] [1] Smith (2006), p. 25.
`{{Sfnm}}`		Article text.^[1] [1] Smith, Jones & Brown 2005, p. 15; Smith 2006, p. 50.
`{{Sfnmp}}`		Article text.^[1] [1] Smith, Jones & Brown (2005), p. 15; Smith (2006), p. 50.

Markup	Renders as
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|1999\|p=101}} ==Notes== {{reflist}} ==References== * {{vcite book \| author = Smith K \| date = 1999 \| title = Smith's 1999 Book \| harvid = Smith1999 }}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 1999, p. 101. References Smith K. Smith's 1999 Book. 1999.

Markup	Renders as
According to {{harvtxt\|Smith\|2009\|p=25}} ... ==References== * {{citation \| last = Smith \| first = John \| date = 2009 \| title = Smith's Book }}	According to Smith (2009, p. 25) ... References Smith, John (2009), Smith's Book

Markup	Renders as
Article text ({{harvnb\|Smith\|2010\|p=25}}; {{harvnb\|Jones\|2010}}).	Article text (Smith 2010, p. 25; Jones 2010).
Article text.<ref>{{harvnb\|Smith\|2010\|p=25}}; {{harvnb\|Jones\|2010}}</ref>	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 2010, p. 25; Jones 2010
Article text.{{sfnm\|la1=Smith\|y1=2010\|p1=25\|la2=Jones\|y2=2010}}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 2010, p. 25; Jones 2010
==References== * {{cite book \|last = Smith \|first = John ... Smith's book}} * {{cite book \|last = Jones \|first = Mary ... Jones' book}}	References Smith, John (2010). Smith's book. Jones, Mary (2010). Jones' book.

Markup	Renders as
Article text.<ref>{{harv\|Smith\|2006\|p=25}}</ref> ==Notes== {{reflist}} ==References== * {{cite book \| last = Smith \| first = John \| title = Smith's book \| date = 2006 }}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] (Smith 2006, p. 25) References Smith, John (2006). Smith's book.

Markup	Renders as
The theory was developed by {{harvs\|txt\|first=F. J.\|last=Murray\|author1-link=F. J. Murray\|first2=J.\|last2=von Neumann\|author2-link=John von Neumann\|year=1936\|year2=1937\|year3=1943}}.	The theory was developed by F. J. Murray and J. von Neumann (1936, 1937, 1943).
The theory was developed by [[F. J. Murray]] and [[John von Neumann\|J. von Neumann]] ([[#{{harvid\|Murray\|von Neumann\|1936}}\|1936]],[[#{{harvid\|Murray\|von Neumann\|1937}}\|1937]],[[#{{harvid\|Murray\|von Neumann\|1943}}\|1943]]).	The theory was developed by F. J. Murray and J. von Neumann (1936, 1937, 1943).
== References == * {{citation \| last1 = Murray \| first1 = F. J. \| date = 1936 \| ...}} * {{citation \| last1 = Murray \| first1 = F. J. \| date = 1937 \| ...}} * {{citation \| last1 = Murray \| first1 = F. J. \| date = 1943 \| ...}}	References Murray, F. J.; von Neumann, John (1936), Mathematics Paper Murray, F. J.; von Neumann, John (1937), Another Mathematics Paper Murray, F. J.; von Neumann, John (1943), Yet Another Mathematics Paper

Markup	Renders as
{{harvcol\|Smith\|2011\|p=25}}	(Smith 2011:25)
{{harvcolnb\|Smith\|2011\|p=25}}	Smith 2011:25
{{harvcoltxt\|Smith\|2011\|p=25}}	Smith (2011:25)
{{harvcol\|Smith\|2011\|p=25–26}}	(Smith 2011:25–26)
{{harvcol\|Smith\|2011\|loc=chpt. 3}}	(Smith 2011:chpt. 3)

Markup	Renders as
Article text.{{sfnp\|Smith\|2011}} == Notes == {{reflist}}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith (2011).
Article text.{{sfn\|Smith\|2011}} == Notes == {{reflist}}	Article text.^[1] Notes [1] Smith 2011.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Author last name	`1`	Last name of first (or only) author Example Smith	Line	required
Second author or year	`2`	Year for citations with one author, or last name of second author for citations with two or more authors Example 2006	String	required
Third author or year	`3`	Year for citations with two authors, or last name of third author for citations with three or more authors	String	optional
Fourth author or year	`4`	Year for citations with three authors, or last name of fourth author for citations with four authors	String	optional
Year (if four authors included)	`5`	Year for citations with four authors	Number	optional
Page	`p` `page`	Page number in source, if the relevant information is on one page (use the «pp» parameter for multiple pages, and the «loc» parameter for other location data) Example 42	Line	suggested
Pages	`pp` `pages`	Page numbers in source Example 23–24	Line	optional
Postscript	`ps`	Trailing text to replace period Example none	String	optional
Location	`loc` `at`	Location in source Example section 7	Line	optional

Template:Shortened_footnote_template

Usage

Parameters

Author(s) and year

Location in the source text

Additional text

Hard-coded link names

Possible issues

Adding additional comments or quotes

Adding a URL for the page or location

A citation inside an explanatory footnote

Multiple lists of inline citations

More than one work in a year

Templates that use Module:Citation/CS1

More than one author with the same last name

Large number of authors

No author name in citation template

Citation has |date= and no |year=

Using sfn with {{cite comic}}

Using sfn with {{vcite}}

Citation format does not support anchors: {{wikicite}}

No closing period: |ps=none

Wikilink to citation does not work

Link works but displays a no target error

Sfn embedded in list-defined ref does not work

Other author–date citation templates

Applications of these templates

Shortened footnote: {{sfn}} or {{harvnb}}

In text attribution: {{harvtxt}}

Bundled citation: {{harvnb}} or {{sfnm}}

Harvard citation: {{harv}}

More exotic Harvard citations: {{harvid}} or {{harvs}}

Variations

Using colon format: {{harvcol}}, {{harvcolnb}}, {{harvcoltxt}}

Parentheses around the year: {{sfnp}} and {{harvp}}

Implementation notes

Citation template anchor

Harvard citation wikilink

Using CITEREF directly

{{sfn}}'s ref name

Tracking categories

TemplateData

See also

Share this article:

Citation has `|date=` and no `|year=`

Using sfn with `{{cite comic}}`

Using sfn with `{{vcite}}`

Citation format does not support anchors: `{{wikicite}}`

No closing period: `|ps=none`

Shortened footnote: `{{sfn}}` or `{{harvnb}}`

In text attribution: `{{harvtxt}}`

Bundled citation: `{{harvnb}}` or `{{sfnm}}`

Harvard citation: `{{harv}}`

More exotic Harvard citations: `{{harvid}}` or `{{harvs}}`

Using colon format: `{{harvcol}}`, `{{harvcolnb}}`, `{{harvcoltxt}}`

Parentheses around the year: `{{sfnp}}` and `{{harvp}}`

`{{sfn}}`'s ref name