 | This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Predefined grouping, such as {{efn}} and {{notelist}}, is the currently preferred and recommended way of adding footnotes. |
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Remote footnotes can be added for pronunciations or examples. Footnotes can be indented, line-split & shortened by deferring details into References or External links. Due to a WP quirk, the 1st footnote on a page might not indent properly. Note each website and beware wp:BLACKLIST sites. |
The topic of advanced footnote formatting[essay] involves techniques for coding remote footnotes of pronunciations or examples, plus indentation and line-splitting. Many articles could use remote footnotes, such as explaining various ways some words are pronounced:
- The term "time dilation"[p] refers to a slowing of elapsed duration.
- Notes
[p] – The word dilation is pronounced "dy-LAY-shun" and is the preferred term.
The superscript "[p]" can be coded by just the short wikilink: <sup>[[#Notes|[p] ]]</sup>. The full, detailed content of that footnote text is not in the upper text of the article but, instead, is coded within the section named "Notes" (or "References"). See below: Remote footnotes & Footnotes within footnotes.
Also, indentation and line-splitting can be used, such as for long URL webpage names, when coding footnotes in an article. For example:
In [[digital imaging]], a pixel<ref>
Rudolf F. Graf, ''Modern Dictionary of Electronics'',
1999, Newnes, Oxford, page 569, ISBN 0-7506-43315,
Google Books (''see below:'' References).</ref>
(or picture element) is the smallest part of an image.
In the above example, each part of the ref-tag footnote is indented (3 spaces) from the left margin. Due to a Wikipedia quirk, the first footnote on a page cannot be indented, because it is treated as a quotebox.
There are numerous styles for displaying footnotes (or endnotes) in a Wikipedia article. There are also many predefined footnote templates (see WP:Citation templates), but with limitations, so (as of March 2012), footnotes also can be hand-formatted to best fit each article.