Thread:Qunow/@comment-6697950-20131031211514

Since you seem to be having problems understanding how timeline referencing works, I'll try to explain how it works.

First of all, timeline referencing is only used for referencing either dates or time. We don't need to reference the story in which the event happened - that's not the point of references on the timeline and it only makes it harder to track which events are properly referenced. And you don't have to explain the plot in the references either - that's what summaries are for.

Now for how the actual referencing works. If a specific date is mentioned in the story itself (e.g. "Today was January 22nd..." Is written in the book), then all you have to do is to write which book and which chapter has the date, to make it easier to find it. However, if a specific date is not mentioned, instead it is given in relative time (e.g. yesterday, the next day, 6 months ago, etc.), then you have to 1. Mention the story that has the relative date (no one is going to want to look through 13 books to find where someone said "yesterday"). 2. Explain how the date was deduced (e.g. "12 months after SAO began"). When you combine the two points, you get something like "12 months after SAO began, according to volume 3, chapter 1." This reference both explains how the date was deduced, as well as which book should be checked to confirm the reference.

Finally, there's really no point in mentioning all the events that happened that day. Just mentioning one event that has a reference that eventually leads to a specific date is enough. E.g. all January 22nd events happened the same day as the Jotunheimr adventure, which has a reference that eventually leads to a date, so just saying "The same day as the Jotunheimr adventure took place" is enough to reference all January 22nd events and it doesn't overload the page with text. 