Footnotes When Preparing Word Doc

[midiguru]

For an annoyingly trivial reason, I need to put a footnote or two somewhere in my novel. (No, I'm not imitating Terry Pratchett. Nobody could ever do that!)

Step 20c of the Style Guide explains how to use in-text hyperlinks for footnoting, but unless I blinked and missed something, there's not a word either about where to place the footnote text itself in the Word document, or about where the footnote will show up (if at all) in various e-readers. I'd like to get it right.

If the answer is, "Nobody has ever done that before. Good luck," then I'll have to try to shoehorn the footnote into the text, perhaps with square brackets. But I'd really prefer not to do that, as it would be very ugly.

Suggestions would be welcome.

[Ted]

Footnote or endnote markers, usually a sequential series of numbers either in brackets or slightly above the line of writing or printing (superscript), are placed at the appropriate point in the text. This is normally where you would insert the author and date if you were using the 'author, date' system.

Here is an example.

Employers are not just looking for high academic achievement and have identified competencies that distinguish the high performers from the average graduate.¹ This view has been supported by an early study that demonstrated that graduates employed in the industrial and commercial sectors were as likely to have lower second and third class degrees as firsts and upper seconds.²

****

Full details of the reference are then given at the bottom of the relevant page or, if endnotes are preferred, in numerical order at the end of the writing. Rules for the formatting of the detailed references follow the same principles as for the reference lists for the 'author, date' system.

1. Moore, K. 1992: National Westminster Bank plc. In H. Eggins (ed.), Arts Graduates, their Skills and their Employment. London: The Falmer Press, pp. 24-26.

2. Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. 1970: Six Years After. Sheffield: Higher Education Research Unit, Sheffield University,
p. 40.

NB. The reference to 'p.40' at the end of note 2 above implies that the specific point referred to is to be found on page 40 of the book referenced.

If the same source needs to be referred to several times, on second or subsequent occasions, a shortened reference may be used.

Studies of women's employment patterns have demonstrated the relationship between marital status and employment sector. ³
-------------------------
3. Kelsall et al. 1970 (as n.2 above).

In this example, the footnote refers the reader to the full reference to be found in footnote 2.

[chelsfield]

Good question. I have always wimped out in my non-fiction by using parenthetical references in the text and a bibliography at the end.

Another approach, better for fiction and if you do not expect to have a lot of references, is to use an asterisk after the relevant text and then a notes page at the end.

I'm not sure if I would dare to try numbering and footnotes at the bottom of the page for fear that either I or meatgrinder would explode from the effort at formatting...

[Ted]

Good point, Chelsfield, about the possible problem during conversion. It could very well pay to use your asterisk or parenthetical method. I wonder if any other member has had success with footnotes and conversion.

[chelsfield]

I have problems getting the formatting for footnotes to work even when just dealing with a Word document!

I think you could get away with an asterisk after the text and then a note at the bottom of the page as long as you format a page break after the note (to keep it from wandering onto the next page) and you're not going to be adding a lot more text to the page after setting the note. 

I can't guarantee that different ebook formats won't produce different results, something I still struggle with...

[Ted]

I haven't tried using footnotes or endnotes with Scrivener, however alawuntoherself wrote about endnotes... alawuntoherself.com/2016/02/18/scrivener-and-endnote-a-simple-guide/

How it all looks after conversion to ebook formats is, as chelsfield wrote above, without guarantee and not mentioned in article above.

[Julie Harris]

Footnotes are really designed for use in print, not flowable text. You should be able to link a text marker asterix and number or whatever to notes section at document end.

[Ted]

Would you need a 'Return' or 'Back' link to return a reader to the origin of the footnote?

[jaydax]

I use footnotes in some of my books. For printed books, in MS Word, you have the option of placing the footnote at the bottom of the page, end of a chapter or end of the book. I find at the bottom of the page is best. When that document is converted to ebook the footnotes tend to move to the end of the book with each footnote on a separate page - disastrously ugly! They do have links back to the original location though.

I now prepare ebooks in calibre. It has options to place all the footnotes at the end on a single page. Easy to use and create. (Honest, calibre is open source, I don't get commission for recommending it calibre-ebook.com/ )