Template:SfnRef

CITEREF

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

This template creates an identifier that is used as a link anchor for short citations. Many articles are cited with shortened footnotes, which usually link to full citations at the bottom of the page. {{SfnRef}} accepts the same parameters as most short citation templates and create matching anchors when used in the |ref= parameter of the full citation. Most {{cite xxx}} templates will automatically generate the anchor, or landing point, for links. The anchor can be created manually in situations where the automatic anchors would cause 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

Additionally some less commonly used citation templates, and all full citations written by hand can only be linked to with a manually created anchor.

Examples

When citing an article published in the December 2004 edition of Rolling Stone where the author is unknown, you might create a short footnote as follows:

{{Sfn|Rolling Stone|2004}}

You may code the value for the |ref= parameter manually, or you can use {{SfnRef}} and specify the same parameters as used with {{Sfn}}:

{{SfnRef|Rolling Stone|2004}}

The full footnote:

{{Cite news |work=[[Rolling Stone]] |title=The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time |ref={{SfnRef|Rolling Stone|2004}} |date=December 2004}}

You can copy and paste the {{Sfn}} template code and change the name of the template from "Sfn" to "SfnRef". If your short footnote includes page numbers such as {{Sfn|Rolling Stone|2004|p=48}}, you can copy and paste it to create {{SfnRef|Rolling Stone|2004|p=48}}; the |p=48 parameter is not necessary but will do no harm.

Usage

{{SfnRef|Name|Year}}
{{SfnRef|Name 1|Name 2|Name 3|Name 4|Year}}

The template accepts up to four names and a year of publication. If there are more than four authors, list only the first four. The last parameter is the year of publication, optionally with a letter suffixed if there are multiple citations by the same set of authors in the same year. All named parameters, such as |p= are ignored.

Reference	Sfnref anchor markup	Full citation	Short citation
Author and date are present	{{SfnRef|Smith|2024}}	Smith (2024). Title. Publisher.	Smith 2024
Many authors and date are present	{{SfnRef |Doe |Pérez |Kowalski |Al-Fulani |2024}}	Doe, John; Pérez, Juan; Kowalski, Jan; Al-Fulani, Fulan; Horvat, Ivan; Hudjefa (2024). Title. Publisher.	Doe et al. 2024
Author is publisher	{{SfnRef|Museum of Modern Art|2024}}	Title. Museum of Modern Art. 2024.	Museum of Modern Art 2024
	{{SfnRef|MoMA|2024}}	MoMA (2024). Title. Museum of Modern Art. 2024.	MoMA 2024
Author is anonymous	{{SfnRef|Anonymous|2024}}	Anonymous (2024). Title. Publisher.	Anonymous 2024
Author is missing	{{SfnRef|''Title''|2024}}	Title. Publisher. 2024.	Title 2024
	{{SfnRef|"Title"|2024}}	"Title". Work. Publisher. 2024.	"Title" 2024
Authors with the same name	{{SfnRef|F. Beauregard|2024}} {{SfnRef|P. Beauregard |2024}}	Beauregard, Fred (2024). Title. Publisher. Beauregard, Paul (2024). Title. Publisher.	F. Beauregard 2024 P. Beauregard 2024
Date is missing	{{SfnRef|Smith|n.d.}}	Smith (n.d.). Title. Publisher.	Smith n.d.
	{{SfnRef|Smith}}	Smith. Title. Publisher.	Smith
Date and author are missing	{{SfnRef|[Description]|n.d.}}	[Description]. Publisher. n.d.	[Description] n.d.

Purpose

This template creates the proper value for the |ref= parameter of Citation Style 1 templates ({{Cite journal}}, {{Cite book}}, {{Cite web}}, etc.) and the generic Citation Style 2 template {{Citation}}. It is intended to be paired with {{Sfnp}}, {{Sfn}}, {{Harvp}}, {{Harvnb}}, and related templates, and uses the same arguments. As explained above, {{SfnRef}} is only necessary in a subset of the cases where those are used.

{{Sfnp}} and its variants create a short footnote that is linked to a full footnote. The templates create the link automatically, but the full footnote must be assigned the proper ID value to be a valid target for that link. This usually happens automatically using the full-citation template's author/editor and date/year parameters, but some cases need a custom anchor, and that is what {{SfnRef}} is for.

When using the Citation Style 1 and 2 family of citation templates, a default ID is generated from the last names of the first four authors (or editors if there are no authors specified). However, if none of |last=, |author=, |editor-last=, or their equivalents are present, use {{SfnRef}} inside the CS1/CS2 template's |ref= parameter to create a link anchor (perhaps using the publisher name or work title or an abbreviation thereof) without having to know the rules for how {{Sfnp}}, etc., interpret the anchor ID string which is normally auto-generated.

Consistent output: For use with CS1/CS2 templates, {{Sfnp}} and its {{Harvp}} companion produce the most consistent citation formatting. For other citation styles that do not put dates in parentheses or brackets, matching short-footnote templates include {{Sfn}} and {{Harvnb}}.

See also

• {{sfnref inline}} – a <span>-based version for use with manually formatted, non-templated citations
• {{citeref}} – a wrapper for {{SfnRef}} to create wikilinks with either superscript ^[n] or plain-text labels to other citations from inside a citation

Notes

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:SfnRef/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.