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A number of years ago we used to give all of our citations in footnotes so that the
bottom of an academic text would be peppered with these small print notations of where
we got our information, but we don't do that anymore. MLA and APA and all the other style
systems changed that because it's so much easier just to have an in-text citation and
then a list of the works cited at the end, but occasionally we do still use footnotes
for a different purpose. If we have an idea that isn't really part of our main line of
argument, but is connected to what we're talking about or sometimes if it's just something
that's really, really interesting that we want to share with our readers, we can put
that in a footnote, and there isn't really any regular system for that except that they
should be numbered. So, in general, you're going to be working on a computer, find the
tool that lets you insert a footnote, makes sure that it's numbered rather than with an
asterisk or some other symbol and go to that and type it in, and make sure that what you're
saying is, in fact, relevant, and you're not just amusing yourself.