User:Philcha/Sandbox/Citing

AKAIK there are 6 ways to give page numbers for books or long journal articles:

• <ref>Author, p. X</ref> etc. forces readers to search manually for the work. IMO that's horrible.
• <ref name=X></ref>{{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 {{r}}, where each use of {{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.
• {{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.
• {{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 <ref name=...> - while AFAIK {{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 {{r}} at e.g. Phaeacius and {{sfn}} at Robert Rossen.

PPS I current use Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{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 <ref name=...>, which is most editors learn first, and avoids a mixing of citation methods, which Wikipedia:Cite does not like.