Template:Refn

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Purpose

This template is used to create footnotes in Wikipedia, as an alternative and complement to the <ref>. Because of a technical limitation, some of the standard Wikipedia markup elements that are often used in the article prose do not work within a set of <ref>...</ref> tags, including but not limited to the pipe trick, template substitution and another "nested" set of <ref>...</ref> tags. For example, the following does not work as expected:

1. <ref>[[Help:Footnotes|]]</ref> (Generates: [[Help:Footnotes|]] instead of a wikilink)
2. <ref>{{SUBST:TODAY}}</ref> (Generates: {{SUBST:TODAY}} instead of the date that the edit was made)
3. <ref>Explanatory footnote<ref>Citation</ref></ref> (Generates: Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). </ref>)

Replacing the outermost <ref>...</ref> set with Template:Tlp allows for the use of the markup elements listed above.

Usage

{{refn|group=groupname|name=name|Contents of the footnote}}

• groupname: Groupname per WP:REFGROUP; if not specified, then the main and nested references will be rendered into the same reference list
• name: Reference name per WP:REFNAME

Examples

Footnotes with citations

Markup	Renders as

Substitution

The first example shows that substitution does not work in a regular <ref>...</ref> tag (the |access-date= does not appear correctly). The second example shows that the |access-date= is substituted correctly within {{refn}}.

Markup	Renders as

Errors

If the reference or note content is missing, then Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content. will be displayed.

If the note content contains an equals sign (=), the equals sign will be interpreted as setting off a named parameter and cause an error. This can be worked around by using a numbered parameter, for example:

Markup	Renders as

{{#section:Help:footnotes|pregroup}}

See also

{{#lst:Help:Cite errors/Cite error group refs without references|rlt}}

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools; see the monthly parameter usage report for this template.

TemplateData for Refn

<templatedata> { "params": { "1": { "label": "content", "description": "The content of the footnote.", "type": "content", "required": true, "suggested": true, "aliases": [ "refn" ] }, "name": { "description": "The name of the footnote. Corresponds to the \"name\" attribute of the <ref> tag.", "type": "string" }, "group": { "label": "group", "description": "The reference group. Corresponds to the \"group\" attribute on the <ref> tag.", "type": "string" } }, "description": "This template is used to create footnotes in Wikipedia, as an alternative and complement to the <ref> tag.", "paramOrder": [ "1", "name", "group" ], "format": "inline" } </templatedata>