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Reference and Span tags de-mystified

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--- A stage-by-stage approach to using <ref> and <span > ---

( This paper is a work in progress - please Private Message the Profile Manager with comments and suggestions - please NO public comments until I've finished this first draft... Inevitably there will be times when things will not display properly during construction. Especially don't expect the Example links to always work.)

Contents

Summary

The history of WikiTree is that of a typical system under dynamic development: presentation styles inevitably change over time, as do the methods used to typeset, or "mark up", a document to produce those styles.

With such a large take-on of bulk data at the birth of the system, it is inevitable that many Profiles are now regarded as archaic and need updating. In the light of better methods such as source templates, users are encouraged to avoid older methods of mark-up, and also help to modernise older profiles, particularly those generated in the early days from GEDCOM import files.

I show in this paper how the seemingly-despised <span> tag is not always a bad thing, and how to decide when to use <ref> instead, or even no tag at all – good news for novice users.

Scope

We will cover:

  • Source section with only ‘*’ items.
  • Basic ‘inline’ <ref> tags.
  • Named Inline tags - <ref name=xxxx>.
  • Use of <span> similar to Ibid.
  • Replacing superfluous <span> syntax with <ref> tags.


Using no tags

Why make something complicated when the data is very simple? A question we will keep asking.

You might retort “well, I will be expanding this profile later and it will need more structure”.

But if ‘later’ means more than a week hence, then stick to basics now – it’s so easy to add the clever bits when you come back to it.

Take a simple profile:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod.

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==

If you don’t recognise this as the basic minimum structure of a WikiTree profile text, you have probably been spending too much time looking at hastily-uploaded work which has not been corrected!

But of course you have spotted that I have left out the mandatory item <references/> after == Sources ==. We are dealing with this later, and technically if you are not using tags there is no need for it. But the WikiTree engine will eventually spot your misdemeanour.

If you have consulted only one source for this profile, you can keep it simple, using the ‘*’ feature for bulleted lists, which produces a nice indented paragraph:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod.

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
<references/>
* Family bible.
see Example nt1 for how this looks on output.

(Alright we have now broken several rules which are beyond the scope of this paper. Like ‘whose family Bible?’, ‘where is it located?’, ‘where can it be consulted online?’, ‘what page is the data on?’, and so on.)

By this method we are stating that the whole biography, Arvo’s birth and marriage, is described in the family bible.

We could add further sources that confirm the same two pieces of data:


== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod.

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
<references/>
* Family bible.
* Dumchester marriage register.
* Ghast family tree.

- which means that all three sources confirm both pieces of data. (We'll leave aside the question of which century in the register should we consult, etc.. etc.).

Here's how it looks now: Example nt3.

No sources?!

If the profile has no sources, this is a bad situation, often due to GEDCOM bulk-loading. This will almost certainly be spotted automatically or by a Data Doctor, which will give the profile a dunce’s hat:

{{Unsourced}}
== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod.

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
<references/>

The thing in double curly brackets is a WikiTree ‘template’[1]. There are lots of these and we might visit a couple of other useful ones later.

A profile marked Unsourced will be flagged persistently on Suggestion[2] lists until rectified. (if you are really helpful and add the name of an area, like {{Unsourced|Dumshire}}, there may be a specialist team poised to work on sourcing in that area.)

To see how the Unsourced tag displays, see Example uns

“Muddled-in” references

...We now find that Arvo’s parentage was mentioned only in his baptism record.

Before showing a valid solution for this, let's just try adding this data into the text itself:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod. Source: Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
* Family bible.
* Dumchester marriage register.
* Ghast family tree.

Well, all the data that we should quote is there. But when we finish editing, and refresh the displayed biography (see Example mud) , we have gone from a simple two lines to a jumble of prose and computerese. Imagine how much worse it would look if we added more sources in this way. You will find that many old profiles are still in need of rescuing from this syndrome!

You wouldn’t write a book like this, now, would you? Obviously you would want to separate out the technical details of a source and make it optional reading, just like a footnote.

<ref> tags

WikiTree provides the solution, which is just like the ‘endnote’ facility in a word-processor (not really a ‘footnote’ in the publishing sense, which implies the concept of a ‘page’). This builds a numbered list of items at the end of the piece, which the reader can click to if desired.

You still place the source text ‘in-line’ inside the Biography, in the position where you want the superscripted footnote-number to appear.

But now, the source data is sandwiched between a start tag <ref> and an end tag </ref>. (Many other WikiTree ‘tags’ are in this form. It derives from an international standard for mark-up languages.)[3]

So, we want the source list to appear at the end of the piece, do we not, but what happens if I just do this? -

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod. <ref>Source: Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
* Family bible.
* Dumchester marriage register.
* Ghast family tree.
This displays as - Example nre.

- um - so where is my carefully-crafted reference?! Aha - I have left off the precious <references/> tag. Only one is needed and it should always be after ==Sources== for best results. Adding this back now. You'll notice we've also got rid of the redundant prefix "Source: " in the citation. (You will see many remaining usages of "Source: ..." in older profiles - please help by editing out these prefixes when you get the chance.)

Now we're getting there - Example 1re

Note that the existing non-tagged sources are preserved.

If you left off the <references/> tag for a while, you will not be surprised that WikiTree will eventually generate a Suggestion[2] for this - [4].

Be especially careful to match your <ref> and </ref> tags exactly. A missing or bad end tag can cause the the system to 'swallow' text that follows.

Hint: You can generate these tags easily by highlighting your text then pressing button 'C' in the toolbar that heads the editing box. Or press it first then enter your text.

"See also:"

(This is not really a tagging issue, and is dealt with more fully elsewhere, but this is related to how things are displayed in your Sources section, so worth mentioning here.)

it still looks like the other two sources contain both sets of data – the parentage and the marriage.

This might be true - there are often cases where a general reference to a document such as a big book is easier than fine-tuning each page and paragraph reference, especially when there are several editions requiring different numberings. If this is the case, you should add a ‘'See also:’' line after <references/> :

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Dumchester marriage register.
* Ghast family tree.
displayed as - Example see

Now it is clear that the asterisked sources are general 'further reading' or research suggestions rather than definite citations applying to individual facts in the Biography. In particular you might want to put some non-primary or uncertain sources under "See also:", if you have already been able to cite the corresponding primary source.

As we don't have the bible and family tree evidence alluded to, these two sources will stay under "See also:" until we know more; of course we are going to ask the Plod and Ghast families if they could upload scans of their family bible and tree!

Messy links

Before moving on, let’s just tidy the reference list further.

Imagine having dozens of references each containing a long web link – that would make the displayed reference list very messy. To improve clarity of the list put links in square brackets with a plain-language title – it’s still clickable:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at [https://www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3 Dumistan Baptism Index]</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.
== Sources ==
<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Dumchester marriage register.
* Ghast family tree.

Note that this needs to have https:// or http:// right up against the left bracket, or it will not display correctly.

displayed as - Example lin

To recap - so far we have achieved a reasonably good result - at least in format - by learning just:

  • Two headings - == Biography == and == Sources ==.
  • Three tags - <ref>, </ref> and <references/>.
  • Lists - making an un-numbered bullet list (of Sources) using '*'.
  • The "See also:" divider.
  • Hiding link details.

We move on now to various ways of de-cluttering your sources, both in the edited text and in the displayed Sources section. The aims (sometimes contradictory) are to improve the clarity for the reader, and also to minimise effort for subsequent editors.

Named References

Suppose now that Arvo's mother's name is not shown in his marriage record, as is likely.

Firstly, the marriage record no longer applies as a source for the whole biography, and therefore must be removed from the '*' list of sources.

So, does that mean we have to use two lots of <ref> tags? Well, yes, you could do this:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist<ref>Dumchester marriage register</ref> and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at [https://www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3 Dumistan Baptism Index]</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester.<ref>Dumchester marriage register</ref>
== Sources ==
<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Ghast family tree.

But the result is that we have unnecessary duplicated citations or 'reference definitions', resulting in two identical lines in the Sources section. Here's how it looks:

- Example drd

Well, that's not too bad if there's just one like this, but it could get very messy if the duplicated entries are numerous and/or long-winded.

[You will surmise that WikiTree's regular scan should spot duplicated 'ref-defs' like this. But no, at least not yet. But 'Named' refs are handled differently - see below.]

Giving names to in-line references

We get rid of these duplicate reference definitions by selecting only one of these as the 'master' definition.

Then we give it a name, thus making it a Named Reference, e.g.:

<ref name=myhist>my history book</ref>

and for subsequent references to the same item, we make a link like this:

<ref name=myhist/>

You perhaps will notice that we are moving closer to concepts used in computer programming. Non-programmers need not worry - all we are doing is putting the full definition into a box, and giving that box a shorthand name so that we can use it later without writing it all out again.

[We'll only need to apply this kind of shorthand once more, when creating a 'span id'.]

You will come across all sorts of things being used as ref-names. Please keep them short, and avoid too much use of special characters or changes of case. This is to make life easier for the next person to edit the profile, most likely you!

The other reason to keep ref-names short is to make them relatively easy to find in the edit box of a large profile. Even better when you TURN ON ENHANCED EDITOR[5], which displays ref tags in a typewriter font, and better still if your browser has the WikiTree Add-on.

You may have noticed that I have some preferred ways of doing things like these ref-names - see section My Way.

So let's apply this new knowledge to our profile:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist<ref name=marriage>Dumchester marriage register</ref> and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at [https://www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3 Dumistan Baptism Index]</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester<ref name=marriage/>.

== Sources ==
<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Ghast family tree.

Well, this is wonderful. We have arrived a point where you can improve nearly all of your profiles using your new knowledge, and without (yet) using span.

So this is your 'blueprint' for all your new work -

- Example blu

Now, I suggest you pause reading here and practise named in-line references a lot. Go and edit other people's profiles if you think they need it - but first click on the manager and check:

  • Look at their Contributions - are they very experienced?
  • Are they a current user or did they go 'offline' a long time ago? (They might even be working on the actual profile you are looking at...)
  • Check this profile's Changes lists - you may find that people other than the manager are currently working on it.
  • if there is no manager (;orphaned'), just go ahead if you are confident - if the profile is dear to you, volunteer to adopt it.


If the manager appears to be current, and you'd like to help, first send a Private Message.

A good way to get experience of WikiTree formatting is to volunteer to help with one of the weekly 'Data Doctor' projects, each week focussing on a different selection of error codes. Look especially for the report of errors in ref tags, which comes up every few weeks. And don't forget to keep pressing Review in case you introduce even more errors! A lot of these ref errors occur while other people are creating new profiles, so if the last Change was within a week or so, just move on.

In general, watch out for:

Accidental duplicate names? I mentioned earlier that an ordinary un-named ref description could be duplicated without the system re-acting. Nothing lost - only your level of 'clutter' worsens. But with a named ref tag, you need to be more careful:

The good news is that the system will spot a duplicate ref name, and someone will eventually fix it for you if you don't notice it yourself.[6].

The down side is that, if you wanted two genuinely different citations, the browser will only show the first one it finds for that name. The descriptions in your second and subsequent inline refs for that name will not show.

Be aware that this can be quite a tricky error to fix in other manager's profiles, because it may not be obvious how the links are meant to match up. Either discuss with the profile manager or leave it alone!

It's worth emphasizing that, when you are constructing and editing tags, you should regularly check your results using the PREVIEW button, as the profile browser can make some quite disastrous assumptions from just one wrong terminator and other types of error. Only Save when you are really sure everything looks right.

Citing different parts of the same publication

We now discover three separate mentions of our Mr. Plod in an industrial history, on different pages. Our profile could look like this:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist<ref name=marriage>Dumchester marriage register</ref> and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at [https://www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3 Dumistan Baptism Index]</ref>

He was apprenticed to a blacksmith in the family iron works.
<ref>Wilkinson, John Arthur. ''A Gazetteer of the Nineteenth-century Blacksmiths of Dumshire''. Dumchester University Press, 1910. Page 10.</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester<ref name=marriage/>.

Later he became the General Secretary of the Dumistan Union of Blacksmiths,
<ref>Wilkinson, John Arthur. ''A Gazetteer of the Nineteenth-century Blacksmiths of Dumshire''. Dumchester University Press, 1910. Page 88</ref>

and in 1870 became its President.
<ref>Wilkinson, John Arthur. ''A Gazetteer of the Nineteenth-century Blacksmiths of Dumshire''. Dumchester University Press, 1910. Page 88</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Ghast family tree.

This is where we introduce the <span> tag.

Don't worry! If you restrict your use of Span to this type of reference, you will find it very straightforward. All you need to do is:

1. Move the common repeated part of the text to a new line in the Sources section, like this:

* <span id=id>Source citation text.</span>

2. Replace all the references with:

<ref>[[#id|Label]], position information, page, chapter etc.</ref>.

The id is typically a short word which links the above two items, just like the name= in normal references.

So what do I mean by a Label? I'm unable to find a direct explanation for this, but if you don't add this second part of the tag it is far from helpful to the reader. You will do fine if you use a word or abbreviation which is unique among the sources in this profile. You could use the author's surname, or if he has several books mentioned you could use an abbreviation of the book title (See my note under 'My Way' if you like). There's no reason why the Label should be much different from the id.

So let's now improve the Plod blacksmith situation:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist<ref name=marriage>Dumchester marriage register</ref> and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at [https://www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3 Dumistan Baptism Index]</ref>

He was apprenticed to a blacksmith in the family iron works.
<ref>[[#gaz|Wilkinson]] Page 10.</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester<ref name=marriage/>.

Later he became the General Secretary of the Dumistan Union of Blacksmiths,
<ref>[[#gaz|Wilkinson]] Page 88.</ref>

and in 1870 became its President.
<ref>[[#gaz|Wilkinson]] Page 88.</ref>

== Sources ==
* <span id=gaz>''Wilkinson''</span>, John Arthur. ''A Gazetteer of the Nineteenth-century Blacksmiths of Dumshire''. Dumchester University Press, 1910.

<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Ghast family tree.

(example output to be written)


Using Free Space profiles with Span

For now, just a brief note, while we are dealing with multi-page refs to the same publication. If you have not encountered Free Space Profiles yet, please go and study this first!

Citing a large book can be a tedious process if there are many different online versions and transcriptions to choose from, perhaps being constantly updated as new versions come online.

What can help with this is the geographically-structured list of Free Space pages: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Category-Source, which sometimes also lists useful External Links. For instance, some sources for Lehigh county PA can be looked up under Pennsylvania. In there you will find a free-space page for the History of Lehigh County, which you can then cite in your span reference:

* <span id=lehighhist>''Lehigh History''</span>. [[Space:History_of_Lehigh_County%2C_Pennsylvania]].

output:



Combining span and ref

Well, you have probably guessed what's next - the final improvement to the duplication still evident in the Plod profile. And with a bit of thought, you already know how to fix it. The last two references to the Gazetteer are of course identical, so you can give the page 88 reference a name and re-use it. Here we go:

== Biography ==
Arvo Plod was the son of Hengist<ref name=marriage>Dumchester marriage register</ref> and Hortense Plod. <ref>Baptism record of Arvo Plod, St. Werebug’s church, Dumchester, Dumshire, book 3 – 1810-1830, page 23, item 4. Bishop’s transcript, accessed 23 Dec 2022 at [https://www.dumistan.gov/archives/bmd/dumshire/dumchester/baptisms/3 Dumistan Baptism Index]</ref>

He was apprenticed to a blacksmith in the family iron works.
<ref>[[#gaz|Wilkinson]] Page 10.</ref>

He married Phoebe Ghast in Dumchester<ref name=marriage/>.

Later he became the General Secretary of the Dumistan Union of Blacksmiths,
<ref name=page88>[[#gaz|Wilkinson]] Page 88.</ref>

and in 1870 became its President.
<ref name=page88/>

== Sources ==
* <span id=gaz>''Wilkinson''</span>, John Arthur. ''A Gazetteer of the Nineteenth-century Blacksmiths of Dumshire''. Dumchester University Press, 1910.

<references/>
See also:
* Family bible.
* Ghast family tree.


Advanced work

As you progress, you will encounter a vast range of styles used across the years. When WikiTree started, there were many uploads producing formats which today we would disapprove of.

However, some of these techniques are still there because we are waiting for better formatting facilities, so the earlier methods are not only there for a purpose, but can continue to be used by advanced editors.

You may volunteer to be a Data Doctor, and decide how to improve many old profiles. Sometimes there is a good fix for archaic formatting, and we'll deal with these first.

<span> tags - to throw away

Span Tags - hmmm - first let's emphasize that, most of the time, you really do not need them.

The use of Span seems to be contentious at present (e.g. see G2G: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/986914/proposal-eliminate-the-confusion-over-the-span-id-tag ), but until WikiTree catches up with the rest of the world's implementation of the 'MediaWiki' codebase, we will sometimes have to resort to workarounds using Span.

But let's start by discussing when you do NOT need a Span tag!

You will see many older profiles from bulk-loading having a single Span tag, like this one ( Reuben Simper, accessed July 2023) :-

== Biography ==
=== Census ===
: He lived with his grandparents and one other; his grandfather was a gamekeeper (probably at Stowell Park)
:: 1851 Stowell, Gloucestershire, England
: He was a miller
:: 1861 Bagendon, Gloucestershire, England
: he lived with his parents and a sister and was a teamster.
:: 1870 South Cottonwood, Salt Lake, Utah, USA
: a lumberman living with wife and three children
:: 1880 East Mill Creek, Salt Lake, Utah, USA
=== Immigration ===
: He travelled to New York from Liverpool on the Belle Wood with his parents and four siblings en route to Utah.
:: 31 MAY 1865 USA
=== Burial ===
: 3 DEC 1891 Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA
== Sources ==
<references />
* Source: <span id='S110'>S110</span> Abbreviation: FamilySearchOrg Title: FamilySearchOrg (http://www.familysearch.rg)
== Acknowledgements ==
* WikiTree profile Simper-5 created through the import of Salmon tree.ged on May 31, 2011 by [[Salmon-120 | Rena Brewin]].

The first thing to note is that there is no link to the span id S110. For the span to be any use, a link of the form [#S110] should be somewhere in the profile, normally under == Biography == or linked from another source in == Sources ==. Sooner or later this will be detected, producing Warning 945[7].

Secondly, the type of source cited is not sufficiently specific to be set against a particular fact in the biography. If it were, then we could consider replacing it with an inline named reference.

So this span citation should be reduced to a simple source entry (here removing other redundant fields and a spelling mistake as well...), as well as consigning it to the See Also: section because it has little practical use except as a general hint:

See also:
* [http://www.familysearch.org FamilySearch]

(Now it becomes clearer that this citation has very little value, and we could justify classifying this profile as {{Unsourced}}. Outside the scope of this paper is the next obvious action - using your favourite genealogical databases you should be able to find primary source images to confirm the bio data.

Convert <span> to <ref>

(to be supplied)


Appendices

My Way

Everyone has their own style of writing these Biographies, and you are encouraged to take account of other editor's methods and conform to them when practicable. These are some of my foibles which you are free to ignore!

Naming of refs and spans

For ref name=x and span id=y, I prefer to use lower-case, except when it's an abbreviation - thus '1830census' but 'DNB'. You can include spaces provided the name is always enclosed in double-quotes. The WikiTree guidelines say you should always use double-quotes, but I find that a pain, making things more fiddly than they need to be. If you feel you must use double-quotes, every reference to the name must also include the double quotes.

Making spans and span refs look clearer

1. Make the first word of the span bold to highlight the span itself, so it looks different from the non-span sources. It can be similar or the same as the id, perhaps the author's surname or an abbreviation of the title:

<span id=bloggs></span>'''Bloggs''', John William. ''John's book''. Published in London 2008.

2. Use the same label in the references:

<ref>[[#bloggs|Bloggs]], page 2.</ref>

3. Put the span definition above the references/ tag - this makes the actual references point upwards, which I prefer to downwards. Also it helps to differentiate the spans from the other sources.


Deprecated methods

WikiTree typesetting logic will always be under development. While waiting for new facilities, it is inevitable that some editors will want to 'jump the gun' and use methods which are allowed but not fully approved. There is a danger that a deprecated method may work now but not in the future, but sometimes their use may be justified if the result improves clarity or saves work.

Using <span class=hidden>

Suppose that you have a profile littered with inline named references and long web links, difficult to edit because the ordinary text is obscured. You could of course replace all the ref definitions with spans, but this only makes work for subsequent editors.

What is needed is some way to move all the references to the end of the bio without losing their place in the narrative. WikiTree will at some point solve this by adopting the structure <references>.....</references> to encapsulate all the refs, replacing the original definition by a normal named ref link.

In advance of this, some editors have chosen to use the deprecated <span class=hidden>.....</span> construct, to hide the set of ref-defs from view. This should not be adopted lightly, since it might suddenly stop being supported. However, once you have done this, it becomes a useful target for automatic replacement later on by <references>.....</references>. A G2G thread discusses this: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1356694/use-of-span-class-hidden-span-to-hide-citation-definitions

You could of course also defer unnamed refs by adding a name just for this purpose.

So, given that you have, for example:

== Biography ==
Born 1812<ref>Smith-Donaldson, Hiram. "A compendium of family histories in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars". Bloggs and Co., London 1901. Chapter 10, page 132.</ref> Married 1832<ref name=marriage>Marriage register, St. Thomas church, JeanFrancoisville, Dordogne, France. Archives of Dordogne, ref A/44/ff/hh/1432.</ref>. Died 1862<ref>{{FindAGrave|34233453464}}</ref>.

This becomes:

== Biography ==
Born 1812<ref name=birth/>.
Married 1832<ref name=marriage/>
Died 1862<ref name=grave/>.

== Sources ==
<span class=hidden>
<ref name=birth>Smith-Donaldson, Hiram. "A compendium of family histories in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars". Bloggs and Co., London 1901. Chapter 10, page 132.</ref>
<ref name=marriage>Marriage register, St. Thomas church, JeanFrancoisville, Dordogne, France. Archives of Dordogne, ref A/44/ff/hh/1432.</ref>.
<ref name=grave>{{FindAGrave|34233453464}}</ref>
</span>

But, WikiTree usually reports as an error any ref tags that come after the Sources heading. In this particular case it may be deterred by the class=hidden bit.

Glossary and further reading

If help on span tags is needed now - you could go straight to Joe Cochoit's valuable paper:

  1. ↑ WikiTree Templates: Help:Templates
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Suggestions: Errors, hints and warnings flagged in profiles, typically fixed by Data Doctors. See Suggestion Definitions. You can show all the current Suggestions for your own profiles, so that you can have the occasional error-fixing spree! Pull down the menu for your WikiTree ID (to the right of "My WikiTree") and select "Suggestions".
  3. ↑ Standard Generalised Mark-up Language: The international standard for mark-up languages such as HTML. This has been modified for use in Wikis, for reasons of brevity, simplification and ease of editing. In turn, WikiTree itself does not necessarily confirm to the full Wiki standard.
  4. ↑ Error - 863: Missing <references/> tag
  5. ↑ Enhanced Editor: Help:Enhanced_Editor
  6. ↑ Error - 869: Duplicated named Inline citations
  7. ↑ Warning - 945: Unused Span Anchors




more coming........



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