While reading a book or article, have you ever noticed little numbers placed at the ends of some sentences? These numbers usually appear as superscripts and correspond with numbers placed at the bottom of the page, next to which appears further information that is both necessary and supplementary.
Sometimes this information will come in the form of citations, but sometimes it will simply present additional notes about the topic at hand. These citations and explanations are called "footnotes" because they appear in the footer of the page. Take a look at the example below to see where footnotes appear on a page:. Footnotes are notes that are placed at the end of a page and used to reference parts of the text generally using superscript numbers. Writers use footnotes for several purposes, including citations , parenthetical information, outside sources, copyright permissions, background information, and more.
Now that you understand what footnotes are, you might be wondering: why use them? The truth is, long explanatory notes can be difficult for readers to trudge through especially when they occur in the middle of a paper. Providing this information is necessary, but doing so in the main text can disrupt the flow of the writing.
Imagine if every time an author wanted to provide a citation, the entire citation had to be written out at the end of the sentence, like this Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ] Books would become much longer and reading would be much more tedious. That's why footnotes are so useful: they let authors provide the required information without disrupting the flow of ideas. While footnotes are a great resource for sharing information without clogging up the writing, it's important to note that certain style guides restrict when footnotes can be used.
We'll get into that soon! Unsure how to edit your paper? Contact the Scribendi team for professional proofreading. Authors can also use endnotes to avoid disrupting their writing with extraneous information. Both serve similar purposes; the main difference lies in their location in your text.
Here's a closer look at how both footnotes and endnotes work. When deciding whether to use footnotes or endnotes , authors must consider three main factors:. To make a footnote citation, label the area of your text that you need to reference with a number if it's your first footnote, start with "1. At the bottom of the page, include this number with the citation. When readers see the number in the text, they know they can find the source by looking for the corresponding footnote.
The exact format of your footnote depends on the style guide you're following. Here are some of the most common style guides for writing papers, as well as the footnote rules for each one.
However, footnotes are occasionally employed in other style guides as well. While MLA style discourages the use of long footnotes or endnotes, the style guide does permit their use for directing readers to other pertinent information on a relevant subject.
The guide recommends that superscript numbers within the text are placed outside any punctuation that might be present i. The exception to this is that the superscript numbers should be placed before dashes. Even then, the guide recommends that footnotes only be used to provide content notes such as providing brief, supplemental information about the text or directing readers to additional information and to denote copyright permissions. Of the three main style guides described here, CMS relies on footnotes the most.
While CMS does allow the author—date system of in-text referencing i. The question of whether to use footnotes at all in science fiction specifically was answered here.
When writing essays, I would sometimes use endnotes for commentary on points I was making. They were notes that weren't required for the essays—and also too long to not be distracting if I put them into footnotes. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Cyn says make Monica whole Cyn says make Monica whole I write and peer review academic articles; I've seen long footnotes before that were appropriate.
As Cyn says, it should be necessary information, not "entertaining. However, when citing some works to support a claim, a footnote can provide details of the citation so the reader doesn't have to go look them up or find the paper being cited; for example to note that a method in the cited work does have various strict limitations, but those have been addressed and it is being used correctly by the author in this case.
Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Upcoming Events. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Linked 1. Related 5. Hot Network Questions. Question feed. Audience members generally responded positively to the racial representation in the musical. Note that when a dash appears in the text, the note number appears before the dash.
If a note number must be placed somewhere other than at the end of a sentence or a sentence requires more than one note, the note number should be placed in the least distracting unambiguous spot. For instance:. MLA recommends that all notes be listed on a separate page entitled Notes centered.
Title the page Note if there is only one note. The Notes page should appear before the Works Cited page. This is especially important for papers being submitted for publication.
The notes themselves should be double-spaced and listed by consecutive Arabic numbers that correspond to the notation in the text. The first line of each endnote is indented five spaces, and subsequent lines are flush with the left margin. Place a period and a space after each endnote number, and then provide the appropriate note after the space.
The ninth edition of the MLA Handbook states that notes may be styled either as footnotes or endnotes. See the MLA Style Center for additional guidance on this topic and follow your instructor's or editor's preferences. See Blackmur, especially chapters 3 and 4, for an insightful analysis of this trend. On the problems related to repressed memory recovery, see Wollens ; for a contrasting view, see Pyle 43; Johnson, Hull, Snyder ; Krieg Several other studies point to this same conclusion.
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