Skip two spaces after the footnote before you begin the next sentence. Whenever possible, put the footnote at the end of a sentence, immediately following the period or whatever punctuation mark completes that sentence. To decide whether you should cite your sources in footnotes or in the body of your paper, you should ask your instructor or see our section on citation styles. Sometimes they simply refer to relevant sources - they let your reader know where certain material came from, or where they can look for other sources on the subject.

See our section on citation styles for more information.įootnotes are not just for interesting comments, however. Some, however, allow you to make parenthetical references (author, date) in the body of your work. Because this makes it convenient for your reader, most citation styles require that you use either footnotes or endnotes in your paper. When your reader comes across the footnote in the main text of your paper, he or she could look down at your comments right away, or else continue reading the paragraph and read your comments at the end. See how it fits in the body of the text?ġ At the bottom of the page you can insert your comments about the sentence preceding the footnote. This is an illustration of a footnote.1 The number “1” at the end of the previous sentence corresponds with the note below. Then, at the bottom of the page you could reprint the symbol and insert your comment. In this case, you could add the symbol for a footnote. For example, say you want to add an interesting comment to a sentence you have written, but the comment is not directly related to the argument of your paragraph. They cite references or comment on a designated part of the text above it.

Footnotes are notes placed at the bottom of a page.

Endnote definition example