Fun With Footnotes

by Teri Spray

Eventually everyone needs to be able to write using other people’s great thoughts, ideas and quotes. As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”1 Therefore, most of our non-creative writing needs to be well documented.

When and where to footnote:
Any research paper requires appropriate notation of sources for facts, figures and quotations. The purpose of research writing is to combine ideas from various sources into an interesting package of information.

In order to present this information accurately, one must document the sources consistently. For example, if I were to write the words, “All papers of the 19th century were footnoted using endnotes rather than footnotes.” 2 That is a fact that should rightly be cited with a resource. Otherwise you as my reader would be left to wonder, “How does she know that? Where did that fact come from?”

If you are presenting bodies of information from a particular source and simply rewriting the information by the paragraph, then simply place a footnote citation at the close of the paragraph.3

Footnoting citation numbers can also appear in the text like this 4 or like this (4). Ideally footnotes should be noted at the foot of the page. Unfortunately all desktop publishing programs and word processing programs are not created equal, so we happily accept a page of numbered “Endnotes” at the close of the paper instead of footnotes.

How to footnote:
As I was writing this piece in the Appleworks program, I simply went to my format menu and clicked on “Insert Footnote.” It immediately made the appropriate footnote number in the text and moved me to the bottom of the page to write the citation. If you do not have this feature in your word processing program, simply write the number in your text and then list it on a separate page at the end of your paper.
Footnote citations:
Good news! Footnotes or endnotes are easy and simple to document. Simply list the author’s name first if it is an article, small book, opinion or interview. Then identify the title of the piece the work is from, list a page number and you’re done. ( 2 Teri Spray, Fun with Footnotes, page 1.) If it is from a text or anthology, simply list the title then the page number. Note: in most word processing, we now use italics for titles to indicate titles more often than underlining. Italics also replace quotation marks to indicate articles. The times they are a- changing!

When you continue to cite the same source in sequential numbers, you only have to use the abbreviation “Ibid.” and list the page number. This means you are still using the same source as above, so you do not need to rewrite the information over and over. (See footnotes 3 + 4.)

Greater source detail will be added in the bibliography. That is where you also list the publisher, publishing location and copyright date. Remember footnotes are a requirement in all papers submitted to the Senior Composition Correspondence Course required for graduation from Christian Cottage Schools. Seniors who fail to footnote will fail the course.

Therefore, have fun finding out lots of facts and have more fun writing footnotes!

1 Ecclesiastes 1:9 (c)
2 Teri Spray, Fun with Footnotes, page 1
3 Ibid, page 1
4 Ibid, page 1