Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters


This is a tracking category for CS1 and CS2 templates that have parameter values that contain invisible or non-printable characters.

<char> character in |<param>= at position n

This error is reported for citations with parameter values that contain invisible or non-printable characters known as control characters; the error includes the position at which the character can be found. Module:Citation/CS1 detects parameter values that contain any of these characters:

To resolve invisible-character errors, remove or replace the identified character. Most intentional white-space characters should be replaced with a normal space character (i.e. press your keyboard's space bar). See MOS:NBSP for guidance on insertion of intentional non-breaking spaces.

Because these characters are mostly invisible, the error message identifies the character's position in the parameter value counted from the left. Space characters between the assignment operator (the '=' sign) and the parameter value are not counted. If you move through the citation with the arrow keys then the cursor may stand still once at an invisible character, which can be removed with Delete or ← Backspace. If you copy-paste a string to the "Characters" field at https://r12a.github.io/app-conversion/ and click "View in UniView" then the position and name of all characters is shown.

<name> stripmarker in |<param>= at position n

Strip markers are special sequences of characters that MediaWiki inserts as a place-holder for certain xml-like tags. These tags include <gallery>...</gallery>, <math>...</math>, <nowiki>...</nowiki>, <pre>...</pre>, and <ref>...</ref>. The strip markers are replaced with content before the final page rendering. The module ignores math and nowiki strip markers.

To resolve strip marker errors, remove or replace the identified tag. The error message identifies the strip marker's position in the parameter value counted from the left. Space characters between the assignment operator (the '=' sign) and the parameter value are not counted when calculating the position.

Strip marker errors can also be caused by unsupported additional text or templates in parameter values—for example, {{ISBN}} in |title=. Resolve the problem by moving the extraneous text outside of the citation template, or by removing the extraneous text or template markup, as appropriate.

Pages with this error are automatically placed in Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters.[a]


  1. Pages in the Book talk, Category talk, Draft talk, File talk, Help talk, MediaWiki talk, Module talk, Portal talk, Talk, Template talk, User, User talk, and Wikipedia talk namespaces are not included in the tracking categories. In addition, pages with names matching the patterns '/[Ss]andbox', '/[Tt]estcases', '/[^/]*[Ll]og', and '/[Aa]rchive' are not included in the tracking categories.