Are Bullets allowed between Reference tags?

Question

After intensive scanning on WikiTree Help pages I could not fine a clear anwser to this question

This was on a profile and I am unsure if it needs correction 

Example:

<ref>Source * "South Africa, Transvaal, Probate Records from the Master of the Supreme Court, 1869-1958," database with images, FamilySearch etc...</ref> 

Displayed under references  with a bullet after the word Source and followed by the citation 

Thanks in advance 

 

Comments

An asterisk is the code for a bullet point in sources, so I would just remove it.

Answer 1

You don't need the word 'Source' or the asterisk. Just delete them. Having the ref tags around the citation will make the whole thing come under ==Sources==.

Comments

Thank you for your reply Gill and Ros.

Q:

Is it allowed if the editor prefer it that way? 

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Whether it's "allowed" or not is hardly relevant. But it is unnecessary clutter, and someone will eventually come around and remove it.

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It may have even been a mistake in cutting and pasting from another location.

Answer 2

If you "<ref>" your source, the reference will automatically be placed under the "== Sources == <references />" section with an asterisk bullet and whatever you type after it.

Answer 3

As mentioned by others, there seems no need for a bullet here. However I am not sure if anyone actually gave an opinion on the question.

In my mind there is no "rule" against bullets in footnotes. I can imagine that in some complicated footnotes a bullet might be necessary.

Comments

If a footnote gets that complicated, I figure that the discussion rather belongs in the Research Notes.

You can never come up with a comprehensive list of what is "allowed" or not in a biography. In most cases you simply have to rely on your taste and common sense.

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But it's not even going to be formatted as a bullet in the example given. It's just going to be text. So "Source *" adds nothing to the content of the reference and can totally be removed.

It's probably fair to note that this is a definite style improvement, but doesn't really improve how easy it is to interpret the reference. So, low importance. It's an edit you probably should make, it would be very strange if someone objected to the change, but in the end it doesn't matter much.

Answer 4

Ronel, I tried pasting your example into my own profile, and it seems to work without causing any problem.  The asterisk displays as an asterisk, not a bullet.  The software doesn't disallow it, and I doubt if policy addresses it anywhere.

So it looks as if you could use it if you prefer, but I'm not sure why anyone would prefer it.  If you prefer that look, I think you'll need to plug in a real bullet, not an asterisk.

Comments

Actually, if you do it with a hard return after the word "Source", the asterisk begins the next line and appears as a bullet.

<ref>Source
* "South Africa, Transvaal, Probate Records from the Master of the Supreme Court, 1869-1958," database with images, FamilySearch etc...</ref>

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Oof. Not great. That seems like an obvious "please fix this"