Study · guide

Footnote citation: inserting one, and what goes in it

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 3 September 2026 · 10 min read

A footnote citation is two separate problems that get searched as one. The first is mechanical — how to make the little raised number appear and the note attach itself to the right page. The second is editorial: what actually belongs down there. They are asked as one question and answered as two, so this guide does both, in that order.

It is one of the formatting jobs that live behind a menu rather than on the toolbar, like striking a line through text: easy once you know where, and looked up every time until then.

1. Put the cursor where the number belongs. After the punctuation, except at a dash, where it goes before.
2. Use the command, not the keyboard. In Word: References › Insert Footnote. The application numbers the note, renumbers everything when you insert one in the middle, and moves the note when you move the text.
3. Write the note at the bottom of the page. Word puts the cursor there for you.
4. Check what you have written is not an argument. If the reader needs it to follow you, it belongs in the text; a footnote is for what must be traceable but not read.
5. Leave the numbering alone. Typed numbers do not renumber, and the first insertion in the middle of the draft turns them all into a lie.

Both applications number the notes for you, renumber them when you insert one in the middle, and move them when you move the text. Typing the numbers yourself is the single commonest way this goes wrong, and it goes wrong silently — everything looks correct until a paragraph is cut and every number after it is one out.

On the editorial half, the thing worth understanding is that a footnote is not automatically a citation. Styles that use notes for references — Chicago’s notes-bibliography system is the most common — put the source down there. Styles that do not, such as APA and MLA, put the source in the sentence and leave notes for genuine asides. Using footnotes for references in a style that does not want them is a formatting error rather than a stylistic choice, and it is one the software will happily let you make.

The searches around this one come from both halves. Footnote citation and how to cite in a footnote are people who already know they need notes and want the form. How to add footnotes in word and how to insert a footnote are the mechanical question. And footnote vs endnote is the small decision in between: same content, different location, and usually a matter of what the department or the publisher asks for rather than of preference.

One practical habit closes the gap between the two halves. Insert the note at the moment you use the source, not at the end. Notes added afterwards, from memory or from a browser history, are where wrong page numbers and half-remembered editions come from — and a wrong page number in a note is harder to spot and more damaging than an untidy one.

Not covered here. It will not tell you to type note numbers by hand. Both applications do it properly and both fix themselves when the text moves.

It will not treat a footnote as decoration. In some styles it is where the citation lives; in others it is a formatting error, and the guide says which is which.

And it will not guess your word limit rules. What the software counts is documented and quoted here; what your department counts is a question only they can answer, and it takes one line to ask. What holds instead is simple: the instructions here are quoted from Microsoft, Google and the Chicago Manual of Style.