How to create endnotes that use text references instead of numbers?

June 29, 2019 12:07 PM

I am working on a nonfiction book with a small publisher. I want to have endnotes, but not ones with numbers in the text, but instead ones that reference to a small snippet of text and then the note. Kind of like this? I am using a complex workaround involving bookmarks and cross references in Word, but wondering if there's an easier way. Thanks!
posted by heavenknows to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Book editor here, though I work with fiction (as a copy editor) so I don't use end notes in my work. But I know books fairly well, so I'm confused -- how do you want a reader to be able to correlate the end note with the text without having the number show up? Do you want them to have to hunt for each end note reference in the text?

Word does end notes -- can you perhaps explain what about that isn't serving your needs?
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:29 PM on June 29, 2019

You could use endnotes or footnotes AND include the snippet of text. You could use a glossary perhaps instead?
posted by b33j at 10:08 PM on June 29, 2019

Response by poster: BlahLaLa -- that's a good question, but it seems to be the most common way these days for books that straddle popular nonfiction and academic texts to do footnotes. It's not designed for a reader to notice the endnote marker and then look for the endnote in the back of the book. Rather, it is designed for a reader to be able to look for the information if they want it. In other words, the text doesn't get distracted by thousands of endnote markers, but the reader can find the info if they want it by flipping to the back of the book, finding the page number, and the snippet of text the note refers to.

But maybe I'm wrong that this is done a lot, which is why I don't find that much info about it -- but when I pull books off my shelves, almost all of them seem to have this.
posted by heavenknows at 2:46 AM on June 30, 2019

This is similar to an index - something with a keyword and a page reference, where you know as you're writing that you want it cross-referenced, but won't have the page number until the design and layout is done.

Very few books these days have an index with page numbers, because they're a pain to create in most book-layout software. They may have always been a pain to create, but the combination of "easy to make the whole book one font size larger or smaller" and inconsistent feature sets between software types made them too much hassle for many publishers.

Word is unlikely to be able to do what you want, other than by brute-force calculations or complex bookmark shenaigans, as you've noticed. InDesign seems to have some index functions, which may be adaptable to what you need. Quark Xpress also has an index function, but it looks more automated and possibly less customizable to endnotes. (I've worked with both but don't have the current versions of either.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:07 AM on June 30, 2019