What websites integrate footnotes well?
July 25, 2017 9:38 AM

I'm creating footnote-heavy content for a website. Can you point to any websites that do footnotes well?

Hoping to find design and implementation inspiration.
posted by Number Used Once to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
Stratechery.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:45 AM on July 25, 2017


Wikipedia.

(Parenthetical note: A pet peeve of mine is that too many essay writers for the web use footnotes that would have been better served as parenthetical notes.)
posted by ejs at 9:50 AM on July 25, 2017


Edward Tufte style, using sidenotes rather than footnotes.
posted by Kabanos at 9:53 AM on July 25, 2017


RapGenius
posted by TomFoolery at 10:04 AM on July 25, 2017


FiveThirtyEight
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:11 AM on July 25, 2017


Fireside's 2016 #BlackSpecFic Report uses footnotes in a way that I personally really like (because it's obvious that there are notes, I can read them in their entirety without losing my place, and they also live at the bottom of the page so I can see them all later/c&p if needed). I realize the design will feel too intrusive to some people.
posted by wintersweet at 10:36 AM on July 25, 2017


Wait But Why (example post, cmd-f for 'click these') and Marco Arment's blog both do footnotes quite nicely, with popups. In Arment's case, they are also at the bottom of the post.
posted by Happy Dave at 10:42 AM on July 25, 2017


The Tufte style sidenotes seem to work better given the nature of a website, where footnotes would require you to constantly scroll down, then back up, hopefully not losing your place in the process.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:55 PM on July 25, 2017


Seconding TomFoolery, came here to post Genius also. That always seemed the best way to me - I it much better than the popup style, since the popup tends to cover the actual text. I like the Tufte style also (unsurprisingly, since it's similar), but the Genius variety seems like it'd work best when there's a lot of notes and they're very long.
posted by sailoreagle at 2:18 PM on July 25, 2017


I would agree that the tufte style one suffers where individual notes are all really long. If it's multiple short notes it still works ok.
posted by Kabanos at 8:39 PM on July 25, 2017


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