I've found that neatly spacing references does wonders for keeping wikitext readable. For example: Acid2 was first proposed by [[Håkon Wium Lie]], chief technical officer of [[Opera Software]] and creator of the widely-used [[Cascading Style Sheets]] [[web standard]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.root.cz/texty/hakon-wium-lie-css-was-created-to-save-html/ |title=Håkon Wium Lie: CSS was created to save HTML |last=Hassman |first=Martin |date=2008-05-12 |accessdate=2008-07-27 }}</ref> Together with a colleague, [[Ian Hickson]], he created the first draft of Acid2 in February 2005.<ref name="Hickson">{{cite web |url=http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1137799947&count=1 |title=People who don't realise that they're wrong |last=Hickson |first=Ian |work=Hixie's Natural Log |date=2006-01-20 |accessdate=2008-04-01 }}</ref> Acid2 was first publicly announced on March 16, 2005 in a [[CNET]] article where Lie challenged [[Microsoft]] to design [[Internet Explorer 7]], then in development, to pass the test.<ref name="Lie">{{cite web |url= http://news.cnet.com/The-Acid2-challenge-to-Microsoft/2010-1032_3-5618723.h… |title=The Acid2 challenge to Microsoft |author=Lie, Håkon Wium |authorlink=Håkon Wium Lie |publisher=[[CNET Networks]] |date=2005-03-16 |accessdate=2008-01-12 }}</ref> With this style, it's pretty easy to distinguish prose from reference. -- Remember the dot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Remember_the_dot

Gregory Maxwell wrote: I think, rather than using JS to hide refs in page text, defining them all in the references section, or at least at the end of the section they're used in for larger articles, using some sort of new option in the ref tags to make them not display - <ref name="Foo" nodisplay="1">...</ref> - or something, then referring to them inline with only the short form - <ref name="Foo"/> - would be better. A lot of refs on one sentence would still be a little messy, but much better. Of course, the problem would be migrating all the existing refs to such a system, the benefit to just hiding them is that it'll work with everything as it is now. The problem with hiding them with JS is that you need to be able to detect them reliably. I have some regexes I've used for other things, but they tend to assume that people have formatted the refs correctly. A few months ago, I ran a script on a db dump looking for broken ref formatting - unclosed tags, etc. What I found was that people manage to break ref formatting in unimaginable ways, and ways that resisted all my attempts at semi-automatic repair. Hiding them would work in the majority of cases, but in a few strange cases it will likely just explode horribly. -- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)