Help:Cite messages

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcut H:CITEMSG

This is a very technical how-to mainly of interest to editors who work with the footnotes system and related templates

The Wikipedia

Class .reference formats the inline link; defined in Common.css

/* Ensure refs in table headers and the like aren't bold or italic */
sup.reference {
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}

/* Prevent line breaks in silly places:
   3) Ref tags with group names <ref group="Note"> --> "[Note 1]"
*/
sup.reference a {
    white-space: nowrap;
}

Class .references formats the reference list; defined in

/* Highlight clicked reference in blue to help navigation */
div.references li:target,
sup.reference:target,
span.citation:target {
    background-color: #DEF;
}

Although not specific to references, Common.css does have this line height rule to keep line spacing from breaking on subscript and superscript, as used in the inline link. Internet Explorer 7 has problems with line-height when printing, so it is disabled for IE7 through Common.js.

/* Reduce line-height for <sup> and <sub> */
sup, sub {
    line-height: 1em;
}

Cite errors are classed with:

<strong class="error mw-ext-cite-error">

The extension uses some modules for CSS:

• ext.cite.css: CSS
• ext.cite.js: add accessibility attributes to the citation links
• ext.rtlcite.css: isolation to fix references in case of RTL words at the end of a reference

The inline reference links are defined in MediaWiki:Cite reference link. The default is:

<sup id="$1" class="reference">[[#$2|<nowiki>[</nowiki>$3<nowiki>]</nowiki>]]</sup>

Where:

• $1 ref ID: Cite reference link prefix + reference name + numeric starting with 0
• $2 backlink ID
• $3 count to display

The English Wikipedia customizes this to:

<sup id="$1" class="reference">[[#$2|<span class="cite-bracket">&#91;</span>$3<span class="cite-bracket">&#93;</span>]]</sup>

Where the brackets that show enclosing the reference count are enclosed in <span> tags so they can be styled.

The backlink label type is defined in MediaWiki:Cite references link many format. This interface page defaults to:

[[#$1|<sup>'''''$2'''''</sup>]]

Where:

• $1 ref ID
• $2 numeric value to use as a backlink: ^ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4}
• $3 custom value to use as a backlink as defined in MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels: ^ ^{a azz}

The English Wikipedia interface page is set to:

[[#$1|<sup>'''''$3'''''</sup>]]

Changing $2 to $3 changes the backlinks from numeric to alpha. This was modified in 2006 to match the output of {{ref}} which was the predominant method of inserting footnotes at the time.

This is the markup for some simple references

Unnamed <ref>This is an unnamed reference</ref>

Named <ref name="named">This is a named reference</ref>

Named reference used again <ref name="named"/>
<references/>

Which shows as

Unnamed ^[1]

Named ^[2]

Named reference used again ^[2]

Which renders as

The MediaWiki messages are combined to form the HTML output

<p>Unnamed <sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-0" title=""><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a></sup></p>
<p>Named <sup id="cite_ref-named_1-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-named-1" title=""><span>[</span>2<span>]</span></a></sup></p>
<p>Named reference used again <sup id="cite_ref-named_1-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-named-1" title=""><span>[</span>2<span>]</span></a></sup></p>
<div class="references">
<ol>
<li id="cite_note-0"><b><a href="#cite_ref-0" title="">^</a></b> This is an unnamed reference</li>
<li id="cite_note-named-1">^ <a href="#cite_ref-named_1-0" title=""><sup><i><b>a</b></i></sup></a> <a href="#cite_ref-named_1-1" title=""><sup><i><b>b</b></i></sup></a> This is a named reference</li>
</ol>
</div>

If citation templates are used, they will inject other classes and ids into the HTML output.