Template:Refbegin/doc

Usage

{{Refbegin}} and {{refend}} are use to apply any of several optional styles or presentational choices for bibliographies or reference lists—that is, lists of fully-specified references / sources / works cited, alpha-sorted by author/contributor) that appear in wikipedia articles.

The options provided are:

• font size reduction
• display list across multiple columns (in most cases, no more than two columns would be recommended for reasons of practicality and readability)
• apply hanging indent if an individual reference wraps over more than one line in the browser's display window

The default usage (without parameters) formats bibliographies/reference lists in a manner similar to the way {{reflist}} formats footnotes (which are auto-generated by the cite.php extension). The font size should reduce to 90% for most browsers, but may appear to show at 100% for Internet Explorer and possibly other browsers. Reflist uses one CSS entry in MediaWiki:Common.css to set the font size:

• .references-small { font-size: 90%;}

Editors may over-ride this setting by placing entries in their personal CSS.

If the only references are those defined in <ref>...</ref> tags, then use {{reflist}} alone:

== References ==
{{reflist}}

If no references use <ref>...</ref> tags, then use {{refbegin}} and {{refend}}:

== References ==
{{refbegin}}
* general reference 1
* general reference 2
{{refend}}

If there are both types of references, then use both methods:

== References ==
{{reflist}}
{{refbegin}}
* general reference 1
* general reference 2
{{refend}}

Columns

To match {{reflist}}, the number of columns can be given as the first parameterof {{refbegin}}, such as {{refbegin|2}} (defaults to 1).

== References ==
{{refbegin|2}}
* general reference 1
* general reference 2
{{refend}}

References

• general reference 1
• general reference 2

Columns may also be set by specifying the width with |colwidth=:

== References ==
{{refbegin|colwidth=20em}}
* general reference 1
* general reference 2
{{refend}}

References

• general reference 1
• general reference 2

Browser support

Multiple columns are generated by using CSS3, which is still in development; thus only browsers that properly support the multi-column property will show multiple columns.

• Mozilla Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers support multiple columns, but may create widows
• Internet Explorer through version 8 does not currently support the column selector
• Safari, Google Chrome and probably other WebKit based browsers have a bug that breaks links in multiple columns; WebKit support is removed in {{reflist}} for this reason, but is enabled in {{refbegin}} as such links will usually not be used in bibliographies
• Opera does not support multiple columns

Hanging indentation

A hanging indentation may be applied to bibliographies with |indent=

== References ==
{{refbegin|indent=yes}}
Baker, William, and John C. Ross, comps.  ''Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History''.  London: The [[British Library]] and New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll P, 2005.  ISBN 1584561564 (10).  ISBN 9781584561569 (13).  Print.  "Oak Knoll Press Bestsellers", {{PDFlink|''[http://www.oakknoll.com/resources/pdfcatalogues/Cat2007Spring_web.pdf Spring – Summer 2007 Catalogue]''|9.25 MB}}.  Oak Knoll Press, 2007.  [[World Wide Web|Web]].  2 Oct. 2007.  (Page 37 of 40 pages.)
{{refend}}

References

Baker, William, and John C. Ross, comps. Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History. London: The British Library and New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll P, 2005. ISBN 1584561564 (10). ISBN 9781584561569 (13). Print. "Oak Knoll Press Bestsellers", Template:PDFlink. Oak Knoll Press, 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2007. (Page 37 of 40 pages.)

See also

• {{Colbegin}}

Reference and citation guidelines

• Wikipedia:Citing sources
• Wikipedia:Footnotes

Citation formatting and presentation templates

• WP:CITET –description of various templates to format individual citation references

Other reference and citation formatting templates

• Auto-generated listing of footnotes and inline citations
  • {{reflist}}
• Reference list formatting
  • {{Footnotes}}