Whenever you are composing a professional or an academic writing, it is essential for you to take care of certain things. One such thing that we will be discussing in this article is footnotes. It is very important for you to know what footnotes are and how you can write them properly. Let us find all this information below:
What are footnotes?
Footnotes are notes that you usually find at the bottom of a page of an academic or professional writing. They are helpful in providing supplementary information about the composition. They are used to refer to some parts of the text given on that page. Let us take an example to understand this in a better way.
Suppose that you want to add a comment to the text you have written in your essay but it is not directly related to the text or the argument of the paragraph. In such cases, all you have to do is add a symbol of the footnote at the end of the sentence.
Then, at the end of the page you can use the same symbol and write the comment that you desired to add. This is the reason why footnotes are used in essays and other writings.
Whenever the reader sees the symbol of the footnote in the sentence, he should look at the bottom of the page right away to read the comment. Keep that in mind that footnotes are not only meant for adding interesting comments but they can also be used to refer to relevant sources to let them know about the material you have used to compose that writing.
Difference between footnotes and endnotes
People often think that footnotes and endnotes are one and the same thing but this is not true. Here are some key differences that you will find between these two notes:
- A footnote is described as the note present at the bottom of the page to provide extra information to the readers related to some specific text. On the other hand, an endnote is generally used by the writer to give reference or credit to the text. It is generally present at the end of the book or the document.
- As mentioned earlier, footnotes are written at the bottom of the pages of an essay or writing whereas endnotes are written at the end of the book, section of the book, or the document.
Tips for writing the footnotes properly
1. Font:
The most important thing that you need to focus on writing a footnote is its font. Its font should be the same as the other text in the writing and not a different one. It is better to use the same font for writing your entire paper than trying out different fonts.
However, keep in mind that the font size for writing the footnote should be smaller than the main text. Word app will do this automatically for you when you are about to create a footnote on it.
2. Write the footnote in the last:
According to wr1ter, you should always write your footnote in the end after you have finished writing a particular page of your document. It will allow you to arrange the document in a proper way. This point is self understood but we have mentioned it because many people fail to follow the proper procedure for writing these notes.
3. Inserting the footnote symbol after the closing punctuation:
As mentioned earlier, the footnote symbol is placed at the end of the text for which you want to provide additional information to the reader. Always insert the symbol after the closing punctuation, i.e., period. These symbols are usually in numbers only.
4. You are not allowed to use the same number more than once:
While composing a writing, you are not allowed to use the same number more than once to represent a footnote even if you have to provide the same comment or information multiple times.
Every time you are going to insert a footnote on a new page, it must always be represented with a unique number or symbol at the end of the sentence. Apart from this, you also have to pay attention to the sequence of the numbers used.
5. Footnotes must not be used for scientific papers:
Science students have to write a lot of scientific papers and it is important for them to understand the right format of writing their papers. They need to know that footnotes are not allowed to be used in scientific papers.
However, they can use endnotes but even they are used very rarely in the research writings. It is better to avoid using these notes at all in such writings.
6. Use a word processing app for adding footnotes:
If you don’t have much knowledge about adding a footnote in your document, then a word processing app can be helpful for you. All you have to do is visit the menu bar of the word processing app and there you will find the option of “insert” or “references”. T
here are different types of symbols available to represent your footnotes. You can choose any of them. Usually the place of the footnote by default in the word processing app is appropriate but if you want to make some little changes in it, you can do that easily.
To Sum Up
There are so many things that you need to remember while composing academic writing. Among them, footnotes and endnotes are something that you cannot miss to add. Footnotes are the notes which are very useful in providing extra information about the text to the readers. It is usually given at the bottom of the page.
Inserting a footnote in your writing without knowing its proper format can be a challenging task to do. We suggest you study the tips given above in order to write the footnotes properly in your documents or books.
