Skip to main content
Logo image

Sound Writing

Cody Chun, Kieran O’Neil, Kylie Young, Julie Nelson Christoph

Subsection 12.1.2 Inserting Footnotes

Let’s face it: footnotes can be a pain. Luckily, your word processor has some handy tricks for making adding footnotes relatively pain free!
Let’s say you have a couple paragraphs with some source evidence you’d like to cite using footnotes.
This image shows a screenshot of a microsoft word document with two paragraphs of text, including some text that is quoted from an outside source.
To add a footnote, simply place your cursor at the end of the sentence containing that piece of evidence (AFTER THE PERIOD), open the “References” tab, and select “Insert Footnote.”
This image shows the same screenshot from the previous image, but the toolbar along the top of the program has been switched to "references." A red box and arrow emphasize the "Insert footnote" option in the toolbar. Another red arrow indicates where the cursor should be placed when inserting a footnote: right after the period of the sentence containing the reference.
A small superscript number will appear after the period corresponding with the footnote sequence. At the same time, a line will appear at the bottom of the page with a small number beneath it corresponding to that footnote. You can then write the footnote citation according to the appearance order of the citation (for more on how to write footnotes, see Chapter 8).
This image shows a screenshot of the same word document of the previous two images, but now a footnote has been added. A superscript "1" has been inserted where the cursor was in the previous image, and a footnote with citation information is at the bottom of the page. The footnote is emphasized with a red arrow and a note that reads "A footnote!"
Every time you add a new piece of evidence, you can add subsequent footnotes by using the “Insert Footnote” function and the citations will stack sequentially at the footer of the page. However, keep in mind that if you delete the superscript number in the text, you will also delete its corresponding footnote and change the numbering sequence of subsequent footnotes (but this is also nice because it keeps track of the order for you).
This image shows a screenshot of the same word document, but with two additional footnotes added. This demonstrates how the program adds footnotes numbered corresponding to where they appear in the text.
This is the same image shown previously but with one additional footnote.
Easy-peasy!
<Prev^TopNext>