Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with footnotes

How to edit citations

quidividi — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:34:20 -0800

Footnote filter: I am writing a non-fiction, non-academic book and need help determining what to include in my citations. The book contains information and data from newspapers, magazines, wire services, governments, academic papers and first-hand interviews. There are very few direct quotes.

I’m using Zotero to manage my citations, which will appear as end notes. I’ve been diligent about citing information so that I can a) trace my sources, b) give credit where it’s due and c) allow readers to dig deeper.

Now I would like to pare the citations down, so that I meet objectives b) and c) without making the end notes unmanageable.

For example, I have a 2,500-word section with 78 citations. That includes citations for information that I would characterize as (for lack of a better phrase) common knowledge, such as when baby boomers will start retiring, or news reports that would have appeared in many media outlets. Eight of the citations are for data from a government handbook.

Can I safely omit these “common knowledge” citations? And can I use a blanket citation for the data from the government handbook?

(Thanks to NYCinephiles for the link to plagerism.com in this thread)

Save the footnotes

synecdoche — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:28:28 -0800

Is there any way to solve Pages' funny behaviour with long footnotes? For a variety of reasons, I prefer to use Pages to Microsoft Word. For the most part, I'm happy with the program, but it does have one bug(?) that's really irritating: it doesn't seem to know what to do with long footnotes.

What seems to happen is this: if a footnote is longer than the remaining space on a page, Pages breaks up the text so that the footnoted word (and its footnote) is on the next page. As a result, there's a significant chunk of white space at the bottom of the page before the footnote. I think what should happen is that the footnote should be split over two pages, but Pages seems to be incapable of doing this.

I've done some googling and asked on the Apple Support Forums but haven't had any luck solving this problem. The only other option seems to be to convert the footnotes to endnotes but I'd like to see if I can work things out and keep the footnotes as they are what I prefer to use for this particular document.

Does anybody here have any ideas of ways to fix it? (I have submitted a "suggestion" to Apple but I doubt this is likely to get fixed before the next version of Pages, if then.)

Footnote problem

anonymous78 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:56:39 -0800

I'm writing in Word for Mac and all of my footnotes have suddenly turned into little boxes. What's going on?

make Word more clever for me please

cincinnatus c — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:11:04 -0800

Help needed with footnotes in Word. (I know Word is terrible with footnotes and gives everyone grief, but these are straightforward things I'm wanting.) There have been loads of questions about footnotes in Word, but I don't think mine has been asked. I am editing a document which has a reference section at the end of each chapter. It's quite straightforward, but there are a couple of things I'd like to do that MUST be possible because they seem so routine, and if I could find how to do these things it would make my life much easier.

Oh, this is Word 2003, by the way.

1. a) The place where each reference should be in the text is marked ***. I would love to be able to do a straight find/replace, swapping each *** for a footnote reference. But, while footnote reference is available in the find box, it's not in the replace box. Is there a way round this?

b) If that's not possible, I guess I have to find every ***, manually delete it, then insert the references individually. OK. What would make this easier would be if after I inserted the reference Word didn't jump down to the footnote area, because then I wouldn't have to scroll back up to the main text, click anywhere, and only then be able to click 'find next ***'. How can I stop Word jumping down there?

2. While I'm swapping those ***s for references I'm leaving the footnotes empty for the time being. When I've finished added all of them to a section, I have to copy the footnote text from another document. This is unformatted, except for paragraph breaks between each footnote. How can I copy and paste this all at once so Word knows that a paragraph break means 'this is the next footnote'? At the moment, I'm having to copy/paste these one-by-one and it is painful.

Thank you for your help.

If I mess up this paper I won't graduate.

you zombitch — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:47:08 -0800

MLA citation filter: How would I go about citing a footnote in a text that is not written by the author of the text? For example, I am writing about a poem in an anthology, and I will be making use of some of the information provided in the footnotes. How would I cite those parenthetically? Google has just turned up instructions on how to do citations, and I can't seem to find anything on this in my MLA handbook.

, 1? 1, ?

Shepherd — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:30:22 -0800

Mixed footnotes: do numbered notes precede symbol notes, or vice versa? I often work with documents where the client is using symbol-footnotes (asterisk, dagger, etc.) for "explanatory" notes, and numbered notes as "reference" notes (authors and publications).

Nowhere can I find any reliable guide as to which should come first at the bottom of the page. Instinct is to put symbols before numbers, out of the vague sense that the bibliography is always the very last thing in a book, but that's hardly justifiable logic when questioned on it.

Any authoritative reference on this, language-folks? Or hats?

How do I use footnotes properly?

Badmichelle — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:11:12 -0800

Footnote experts/writers: Please help me decide the best way to use footnotes in my document. I'm writing a document (it's a guide, not an academic paper) that contains a number of footnotes - 11, in a 34-page document.

What I'm facing now is an almost-finished document with a really odd system of footnoting. Some pages have numbered footnotes, some use symbols (asterisks). What I want to do is get rid of the numbers, and use asterisks on each page to refer to the footnotes on that page only (as in, I'll start over with * on each page there is a footnote).

Is there any reason I shouldn't do this? Are there rules of footnoting that I need to know? I googled use of footnotes, but what I've found is academic advice to students re: using footnotes or endnotes. That's not helpful to me. I'm definitely using footnotes, and it isn't academic, so I'm not tied to a style guide.

I know I'm making this more complicated than it should be, but I'd like to get it right. I've also read this document so many times that I'm starting to question every single part of it. Suggestions?

Is this a dagger I see before me, footnote toward my hand?

Shepherd — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:07:40 -0800

MetaStyle: When using a superscripted dagger (cross) to indicate a footnote, should the footnote at the bottom of the page be preceded by a superscripted dagger or a regular-sized dagger? Should there be a space between the dagger and the footnote? I'm aware that the dagger follows the asterisk, but as the asterisk generally defaults as superscripted in most fonts, the dagger is where the problem starts to arise.

Bonus points for authoritative links rather than opinions; double bonus points for Canadian authoritative links as that's where I'm located.

Site that will help me, um, cite.... (ugh, I've got nothin')

numinous — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:02:04 -0800

[Attention-Citation-Officers-Filter]: I am clueless as to the proper way of citing financial documents in the course of my writing. The Chicago Manual of Style has left me high and dry. Hope me! I'm having difficulty finding out how to accurately cite financial documents. Specifically, I need to cite information from a non-profit organization's 990 form. I am citing several figures from this tax document. I've searched various terms, such as citation+financial+report+document+writing etc., with every coupling and configuration in between. No. Dice.

So, my multifaceted question:

Is there a cut-and-dried template of citing data from a tax document in expository writing? For both note and bibliographical references? In a way that is consistent with (or at least acceptable by) the Chicago Manual of Style? Are there any websites dedicated to illustrating this type of citation? If so, which ones?

Also, WHERE CAN I FIND AN EXAMPLE, PLZ.

All suggestions welcome. Seriously. This is driving me nuts.

How do I cite my extended quotes in Chicago Manual style?

pluckysparrow — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:54:48 -0800

How do I format extended quotes in my document using Chicago Manual style? I am working on a document that has a lot of extended quotes. I have indented the longer quotations and applied single spacing. How do I cite these? Am I correct to use a footnote? Or do I need to cite the publication immediately after the quotation, in brackets or parenthesis?

The style manual I am using is not giving me a direct answer!

Help my footnotes!

dshargel — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 11:32:48 -0800

I'm having a problem with footnotes on Word 2004 (Mac). . . I am working on a document that was started on a PC version of Word. On the Mac, Word is not handling the footnotes correctly. Specifically, it seems that all of my existing footnotes (done on the PC) are appearing on one page is far apart from where the footnote actually is. They also don't appear to be numbering sequentially. i.e., if I delete #4, for example, it will make the next footnote number 5, not new number 4. Any ideas? (Also, if this is a compatability issue, will the problem resolve itself when I move the document back to the PC?)

Avoiding plagiarism - specific questions on attribution...

soulbarn — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 10:51:18 -0800

I am writing a book - a non-academic, non-fiction book. I am using lots of academic materials as sources, and generally I simply mention the source in the text when I am quoting directly - or summarizing an original idea contained in the source (I use footnotes when the attribution requires more info and interrupts the flow of the story I am telling.) I am, of course, especially concerned with the issue of plagiarism - I am keeping my notes tidy, attributing as above, and otherwise following the various rules I've read in the different handbooks for academic writing I've studied. But here are two questions.... 1) In my book, I've come to certain "big picture" conclusions. In my research, I've found a couple of authors who precede me who come to similar - though not exactly the same - conclusions (all our conclusions are somewhat novel, though I also think they'd be fairly obvious to anybody who spent a lot of time thinking through the topic.) I have mentioned both of these authors as above, when I've directly quoted their material or ideas, but what's the best way to present my conclusion, while showing that I sort of stand on their shoulders, but also that this represents my original thinking. All this, keeping in mind that this is very much a book for popular consumption, so whatever I do needs to be readable for a general audience.

2) One thing I haven't been able to figure out definitevely is the issue of quoting quotes from well-known sources. For example, some of the literature I've studied might use a specific quote from the New York Times. The quote is useful for me, as well. Do I have to attribute it to just NYT, to the author of the paper that originally quoted it, or both? I get wildly different answers on this depending on whether I ask journalists and academics...

thanks!

footnote management in large Microsoft Word documents

Dr. Wu — Tue, 24 May 2005 12:25:47 -0800

My dissertation consists of about 320 pages, split up over seven chapters; each chapter is a separate document. I'd like to combine the seven chapters into one single megadocument, which is easy enough. But I'm having some trouble getting the numbering of the footnotes the way I want ... Basically, Word will automagically run the footnotes together. If Chapter One's last footnote is numbered 44, the first footnote in Chapter Two will, once placed in the megadocument, be 45. I don't want this. I want a single, large document with footnotes that begin at #1 for each chapter. And I can't figger out how to do this. Any ideas?

I'm on a Mac running 10.3.9, and it's Word 2004, version 11.1

How to read David Foster Wallace?

alan — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 20:20:32 -0800

When reading David Foster Wallace, do you stop for every footnote, or read the piece all the way through and go back and read the footnotes later? Or are you too anti-hip cool to read David Foster Wallace¹?
1. This being a likely futile attempt to deflate the anti-literati pile on that's sure to ensue whenever one of the two Daves is mentioned²

2. The other Dave being David Eggers, whom I appreciate as a craftsman and for his handling of the media, if not his actual work.

Footnote Formatting in Word

carter — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 20:50:17 -0800

Ack! Why does Microsoft Word move a footnote to the page following the page where the footnote is inserted (e.g. footnote reference in text is on p.14, footnote itself appears on p. 15)? Or spread the footnote across the bottom of two successive pages? It's nothing to do with (a) inserting the footnote ref near the bottom of the page, or (b) having large amounts of existing footnote text on that page. There's plenty of room for the footnote, it just goes on the next page. Thanks!

Is there a bookmarklet for inserting printable link footnotes in Firefox?

monju_bosatsu — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 06:42:22 -0800

I love kokogiak's bookmarklet for inserting printable link footnotes at the bottom of pages. However, it's IE only. Does anyone know of a way to do this with Firefox?