User talk:Mikeblas/Archives/2019/February

Fixing duplicate refs

I'm kind of new to this and am not sure how to repair the reference duplication. I thought I could separate the book reference by changing the page number... if this is not allowed, then why is there an option to have a page number in the template? Energynet (talk) 02:12, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi there! Happy to help. If you can provide a link to the specific edit, I can probably give better adivce. In general, you're right: the page number parameter of templates like {{cite book}} let you specify the template number. A duplicated reference definition, though, is caused by using the same reference name more than once in an article, when the reference has a different definition.

If I skip a lot of parameters for brevity, maybe you had <ref name="Author35">{{cite book|page=35}}</ref>, but then later had <ref name="Author35">{{cite book|page=217}}</ref>. The problem here is that name="Author35" defines a reference by name -- and ends up having two different definitions. The point of the name is so that you can re-use the same reference again, as <ref name="Author35"/>, without repeating the whole reference. But you can redefine the same name again -- that's what causes the error.

Here are some references (LOL!) that might help: Help:Referencing for beginners, and Help:Footnotes.

Hope that explains it; if not, don't hesitate to ask! -- Mikeblas (talk) 21:06, 9 February 2019 (UTC)