Template:Sfn

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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).