Template:Refname rules
Names for footnotes and groups must follow these rules:
- Names are case-sensitive.
- Names must not be purely numeric; they should have semantic value so that they can be more easily distinguished from each other by human editors.
- Names must be unique—you may not use the same name to define different groups or footnotes.
- Please consider keeping reference names simple and restricted to the standard English alphabet and numerals. Failing that, including if spaces are used, the following technical restrictions become relevant:
- Quotation marks are optional if the only characters used are letters
A–Z,a–z, digits0–9, and the symbols!$%&()*,-.:;<@[]^_`{|}~. That is, all printable ASCII characters except#"'/=>?\. - Inclusion of any other characters, including spaces, requires that the reference name be enclosed in quotes; for example,
name="John Smith". - The quote marks must be the standard straight keyboard marks (
"); curly or other quotes will be parsed as part of the reference name. - Quote-enclosed reference names may not include a less-than sign (
<) or a double straight quote symbol ("). These may be escaped with<and", respectively.
- Quotation marks are optional if the only characters used are letters
- You may optionally provide reference names even when the reference name is not required. This makes later re-use of the sourced reference easier.
