Help talk:Footnotes and endnotes

I have gone into some detail on this, since in the 18 months or so I have edited on WP, I have never used footnotes, and it is only since working on WS I have needed to know. I am sure other editors are the same. Apwoolrich 14:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)


 * What do we do when the original text to be added has footnotes & you need to add a clarifying footnote of your own - how is the original distinguished from the editors footnote? AllanHainey 14:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * How about orginals 1,2,3 etc, WS notes A, B, C, then doubling up as necessary AA, BB, CC, etc? Apwoolrich 17:24, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Original footnotes should probably be included in-text (e.g. bottom of paragraph) using original notation. We ought to provide for annotation (our own footnotes) using templates like ref & note on wikipedia. These provide html links to footnotes, usually placed at the bottom of the page (as well as reverse links from the footnotes). These templates should be tagged to allow for hiding of the annotations, using EnDumEn's javascript trick. I've thinking a bit about how to do this. However, to allow for any annotation marks other than sequential numbers would take a bit of javascript programming, since unfortunately most browsers don't fully support css2. I think I would prefer a numbering system prefaced by a "W" to indicate that it is ours, looking like thisW1, or thisW23. Wolfman 19:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thoughts… 1. Putting footnotes in-text wouldn't work very well because they vary in size and can encompass multiple paragraphs. For an example see History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Chapter 3.  2. Because the number of original footnotes from the source will remain constant, you could just number continuously after the last footnote, so that if you had 5 footnotes in the source, your new annotations would be numbered 6 and up.  But using something like letters to differentiate them isn't a bad idea.  The ref and note templates are handy, but shouldn't be required.  I never use them.  3. When adding the annotations to the end of the document, it would be a good idea to use a header to separate them from the other footnotes along with a little blurb indicating they weren't a part of the original document (such as "These are notes and corrections to the original source document:", as here). &mdash;Mike 02:54, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Footnotes to Endnotes
Personally, most of the time I make footnotes into chapter endnotes, under a horizontal bar. These notes are linked using the wiki ref feature. This has worked out well for all of the works I have done this with. For works where this is cumbersome, perhaps creating a separate page where all of the footnotes go would be good. Then, just link to them in the main text, and use html style [url]#Anchor for get at them. It would probably be best to open all such links in their own window. &mdash;Wikijeff

Out of date?
Isn't this page horribly out of date? Surely, nearly all footnotes should be done with now? I think this page needs a total rewrite. I am happy to do it if others agree. Inductiveload— talk/contribs  18:16, 18 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's hopelessly out of date and needs a complete rewrite. I came here for help with a footnote inside a footnote. A few initial notes towards the rewrite:
 * Simple notes on using for footnotes
 * How to do footnotes that go over more than one page
 * What to do with footnotes within footnotes
 * How to manage a footnote within a footnote that goes over more than one page
 * When to use endnotes and when to use footnotes
 * How to do endnotes for a chapter and for a work
 * Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I added Footnotes across page breaks to Help:Page breaks about two months ago. — Iain Bell (talk) 09:56, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Some thoughts on footnotes within footnotes
as well as endnotes found here. Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

A problem
Footnotes do not break on Persian Wikipedia. When I use "follow" on on fa.wikisource.org it doesn't even recognize it as a footnote. Is there any plug-in or an update? What is the problem? --Yoosef Pooranvary (talk) 10:07, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Template:Authority reference
I've been conflicted on what approach to use for Hold the Fort!, which has a dedicated notes chapter rather than footnotes or chapter-endnotes, for a couple weeks now. While searching I came across the fairly elaborate Authority reference, which operates on the basis of transclusion of reference text, and has distinct main- and page-namespace functionality. It may be helpful to document this option on this help page. djr13 (talk) 19:39, 21 September 2019 (UTC)


 * There's also some relevant discussion for and against reference transclusion here: Scriptorium/Help/Archives/2019. djr13 (talk) 19:47, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Provided example of footnotes within footnotes (possible solution)
This is normal text.

Paragraphs in footnotes
I'd like to add a subsection on separating paragraphs in footnotes using paragraph break (this seems to be best practice as far as I can tell?) under the Advanced section on the help page, unless there are objections to doing this. -- Yodin T 20:48, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion of endnotes doesn't say how to create a "Subpage" for the endnotes.
The flow of how a scanned-in book gets created doesn't seem to work for the description of how to create an Endnotes subpage. Individual pages of the book get scanned in and proofread, and their footnotes are supposed to link to somewhere. (Someone already marked my "proofread" page as not proofread because its footnotes didn't lead to anywhere.) The pages of the book that actually contain the endnotes can be created with anchors on each endnote, as described in this help page. But until somebody actually creates the whole book (after fixing typos and adding formatting to hundreds of other pages) there seems to be no way to (1) create a subpage for the Endnotes, nor (2) check whether the footnote symbols on the original page actually reach the footnote on the endnote page (and vice verse). I am working currently on A Day in Athens with Socrates (1884). I have prototyped this method of dealing with endnotes on pages 3 and 121, but before trying to replicate this complex scheme throughout the book, can somebody tell me if this is the right way to do it? And ideally update this Help page to be clear about how to really, fully finish setting up a book using this method? Thank you! --Gnuish (talk) 02:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks as though it should work. You can transclude as you go, and test the links.  Note: Putting quoted text into xx-smaller font makes it impossible to read. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:08, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the help! I have created the main transclusion page and also a subpage for the endnotes.  But now I'm wondering if we need a subpage at all, can't we just link to the endnotes in the main page?  The help page seems to insist on doing it in a subpage, but is there any good reason for that?
 * Also, this help page doesn't mention how to make backlinks from the endnotes to where they were cited. I made that work by adding extra anchors and links.  If you like this method, I'll see about describing how to do that in the help page.  --Gnuish (talk) 17:28, 23 February 2024 (UTC)