CZ:List-defined references

See also Help:Index/Formatting/References

List-defined references (LDR) is a referencing method that moves the text of the references out of the main body of an article and into the "References" section at the bottom of the article.

LDR is a way to make referencing of article contents with a great deal less cluttering of the article's main body text in the edit page. Reduced clutter makes reading the edit page and revising it much easier. Creating LDR is not only cleaner than previous methods such as the method, it is a method that will be more easily understood by new users.

Overview of how LDR works
This section explains the steps and coding to be used in the edit page of a Citizendium article in order to cite references as the sources for words or statements (sentences or paragraphs) in the main body of the article.

The user creates a short unique id (identifier or name) for each individual reference which is formatted like this:
 * Note the forward slash (&thinsp; / &thinsp;) at the end of the id.

To cite a reference as the source for a word or statement in the main body of the article, the user places only the id of that reference just to the right of the statement. An id for any specific reference may be used in multiple locations in an article if the same reference is used for multiple words or statements in the article.

Then in the ==References== section at the bottom of the article, the user lists each reference formatted like this:


 * Where xxxx is the reference's full text. Quotation marks enclosing the ( id ) are not needed.

Note that the forward slash (&thinsp; / &thinsp;) is not included after the id for the listed full-text references in "References" section.

Some rules

 * When a comma or a period is located immediately to the right of a word or statement where the user wants to locate a reference id (e.g., ), the id should be located immediately to the right of the comma or the period and should be separated from the next word or next sentence by a single blank character space.


 * A blank line space must be provided between each listed reference.


 * Note that the list in the "References" section is within a template. The list must start with exactly as shown in the example coding below.

Putting it together
To summarize, the basic templates used for bibliographic information are the same and  and  templates used with the method. However, these templates are placed not in the text, but at the end of the article following a References header using the format:


 * &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;(these are additional final braces)

where the names "Ref1", "Ref2" are arbitrary creations of the writer. Connection to these definitions from the text is done with an insertion, such as, but notice, with a forward slash.

Although not necessary to its functionality, for ease in editing the list of named notes in the References section can be put in alphabetical order. That makes finding the note in this list easier in the event the note should be edited, for example to update a link or add to descriptive material.

Example
This is how to code the edit page of an article using "List-Defined References"&thinsp;:

This is what the above coding produces on the article page&thinsp;:

Additional examples can be seen in the article Set (mathematics), which is formatted using the CZ:List-defined references methodology.

A style note
Note that the and  templates used in the above coding example are formatted with the cells in a horizontal style rather than a vertical style where the cells are in a vertical column. The horizontal style looks neater and definitely uses less space. However, the horizontal style is only a suggestion, it is not mandatory.