User:Philcha/Sandbox/Citing
AKAIK there are 6 ways to give page numbers for books or long journal articles:
Author, p. X etc. forces readers to search manually for the work. IMO that's horrible.{{rp|n}} has the risk that the ref name and the page number(s) are split by a careless editor.- Using different refs for different parts of the same work. Becomes unusable for both editors and readers if there many parts of the same work.
- Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{tl|r}}, where each use of {{tl|r}} links to a citation and also shows a page number (range) in the main text. Disadvantage: shows page number (range) in the main text. Advantage: gets the reader to the work in 1 click rather than 2.
- {{tl|Harv}} etc. Advantage: does not show page number (range) in the main text. Disadvantage: gets the reader to the work in 2 clicks rather than 1,and 2 more clicks back to the text; (I think) equivalent of a ref name= appears after the 1st click, and can be as long and obscure.
- {{tl|sfn}} etc. Advantage: does not show page number (range) in the main text; sorts page numbers in the same work so that each group of refs to the name page(s) appear as abcdef..., as in the output of
- while AFAIK {{tl|Harv}} does not sort and group page numbers, and you get a longer list of "refs". Disadvantage: gets the reader to the work in 2 clicks rather than 1,and 2 more clicks back to the text; equivalent of a ref name= appears after the 1st click, and can be as long and obscure.
:Are there other choices?
:PS If you want realistic examples, I used Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{tl|r}} at e.g. Phaeacius and {{tl|sfn}} at Robert Rossen.
:PPS I current use Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{tl|r}}, as IMO the page numbers in the main text are not obstructive and this method uses fewer clicks; YYMV. This method also plays nicely with the basic