Template:Format footnotes/doc

When to use

This template indicates that the article uses many improperly formatted or non-formatted inline citations that require large-scale conversion to an accepted form of inline citation.

How to use

To add this template to an article, copy and paste:

• {{Format footnotes/doc|{{subst:DATE}}}}

or

• {{Format footnotes/doc|date=May 2025}}

Both options result in the same output.

• This template will add the page to Category:Articles needing footnote reformatting and Category:Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify.
• A bot will add the date for you at a later time if you forgot.

Examples

In-line reference using ref tags (correct)

A standard, correct way of formatting the following citations (with some acceptable variations as described at Wikipedia:Citing sources) would be:

Correct: Australia has a government.

References

The following are examples of improperly formatted or non-formatted inline citations. This template is appropriate for articles that contain many such citations, therefore requiring large-scale conversion.

Embedded link (incorrect)

Incorrect: Australia has a government Australian Government.

or:

Incorrect: Australia has a government.[1]

Manual number (incorrect)

Incorrect: Australia has a government^{see footnote 1}

Inline parenthetical reference (incorrect)

Inline parenthetical referencing was a previously accepted citation system that is now deprecated per WP:PARREF. The recommendation is to convert inline parenthetical references to shortened footnotes (as depicted below) or regular footnotes (as depicted in the first example above) or footnotes with list-defined references.

Incorrect: Australia has a government (Australian Government Press Agency, 2009).

Correct: Australia has a government.

References

Sources

See also

• {{Inline parenthetical referencing}}
• Help:Footnotes
• Help:List-defined references
• Help:Shortened footnotes
• Wikipedia:Citing sources
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods
• Wikipedia:Citation templates
• Wikipedia:Template index/Cleanup

This template indicates that the article uses many improperly formatted or non-formatted inline citations that require large-scale conversion to an accepted form of inline citation.

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Affected area	1	Text to replace the word "article", usually "section" Example section	Line	optional
Reason	reason	A description of the issue, to add to the end of the text in the generated tag. Example Parenthetical citations should be converted to [[Help:Footnotes|footnotes using reference tags]].	Line	optional
Month and year	date	Provides the month and year of the citation request; e.g., 'January 2013', but not 'jan13' Auto value {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}	String	suggested