What footnotes are used for

A footnote is a note placed in the proper end section of a page to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference (a source) for it. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote. Footnotes are often used to add information that might be helpful to later fact-checkers, such as a quotation that supports your edit.

[edit] How to write them

1. Place a <ref> ... </ref> where you want a footnote reference number to appear in an article—type the text of the note between the ref tags.
2. Place <references/> or {{reflist}} in an otherwise empty "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be automatically generated here. If you want to create columns of notes, write {{reflist|2}}.

Example edit:

The Sun is pretty big, <ref>Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005</ref>

but the Moon is not so big. <ref>Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 51(78):46</ref>



== Notes ==

<references/>

Example rendered result:

The Sun is pretty big, ^[1] but the Moon is not so big. ^[2]



Notes

---

1. ^ Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005.
2. ^ Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78):46.

[edit] Ref tags and punctuation

Material may be referenced mid-sentence, but footnotes are often placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph. Frequently, a reference tag will coincide with punctuation and some editors put the reference tags after punctuation (except for dashes), as is recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style. ^[1] Some editors prefer the style of journals such as Nature , which place references before punctuation. If an article has evolved using predominantly one style of ref tag placement, the whole article should conform to that style unless there is a consensus to change it.