I am having a problem with in-lilne references

Question

In the profile for [[Glidden-62 | Joseph W. Glidden]], I am having trouble formatting the in-line references properly. The in-line references appear in the public profile, but are not displaying properly. They are all clumping together under the first reference in the Sources section. I believe the problem is a footnote reference within another footnote reference, but I just can't figure out how to resolve the issue properly. Any tips?

Answer 1

David, I just took a quick look and have not read the whole thing, but I found something in the first paragraph that would cause a problem.  Here's what you have there:

<ref>Davis, Harold A.,
<ref>An International Community on the St. Croix (1604-1930), Maine Studies no. 64, University of Maine at Orono, Maine, 1974, p. 125: </ref>

The first <ref> was not closed before the second was opened.  You probably want to remove the <ref> that is before "An invitation ...", since it is a continuation of the citation you started with the name of the author.

Tags that mark a section of text that they operate on have a start and end version, which must be used to mark the content on which they operate.  End tags always are the same as start tags except with an extra slash before them - thus <ref> followed by the citation and ended with </ref>.  If you forget an end tag then the computer thinks everything you type after the start tag is all part of the same citation and will not display it in the biography, but will bunch it all together in the citation.  Who ever said computers are smart??????

Comments

Gaile:

Problem solved! Thank you so much for your eagle-eye.

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You're very welcome, David.  We all need a second pair of eyes to spot things we miss - it happens to me often.

Answer 2

The inline references are working properly now. The problem was not closing some of the <ref> lines. I use the cite your source button at the top of the biography section when I am editing to avoid that problem. Just click on that where you want an inline reference and replace the highlighted text with your source.

Comments

Dale:

Did you scroll all the way down to the == Sources == section, because when I view the public profile, all the footnotes are still clumped together?

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Also, how can I undo the downvote? I really just wanted to respond.

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David, just click on the arrow again and the downvote vanishes. I am not that worried about that on this answer but some others would be.

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Thank you so much for this handy tip!