Template:Sfn
The shortened footnote template {{sfn}} creates a short author-date citation in a footnote. To read a full description of how these shortened footnotes are used in Wikipedia, see "Shortened footnotes" in Wikipedia:Citing sources.
- Features
- Automatically combines identical footnotes.
- Automatically creates a one-way link to a citation template at the bottom of the page.
- Advantages
- The template call is both concise and readable.
- It allows any editor to identify the reference while looking at the wikitext.
- It minimizes clutter in the wikitext by using only the smallest possible amount of (meaningful) information to identify the source.
- Text containing {{sfn}} can be cut and pasted without any danger of accidentally deleting the original named reference; any call to {{sfn}} can define the named reference.
- It allows the detection of errors using bots (i.e. it has machine readable semantics).