Footnotes

In some documents it's necessary to put annotations at the bottom of the page. This article explains how to add footnotes

Introduction

Adding a footnote to your document is straightforward

I'm writing something here to test \footnote{footnotes working fine}
several features.

The command \footnote{footnotes working fine} adds a superscript to the word right before the command and prints the corresponding footnote.

  Open an example in Overleaf

Basic usage

The superscript mark to reference a footnote can be manually set. See the example below:

I'm writing something here to test \footnote[10]{footnotes working fine}
several features. You can write the footnote text\footnotemark in its
own line.
\footnotetext{Second footnote}

There are three new commands here:

\footnote[10]{footnotes working fine}

Adds a footnote using "10" as reference mark. Unless you have a good reason to do this, it's not recommended because the footnote counter is not altered and you may end up with two different footnotes with the same mark.

\footnotemark

Prints a foot note mark but without the actual footnote. This is helpful to write the actual footnote text in a new line.

\footnotetext{Second footnote}

Prints the footnote corresponding to the previous \footnotemark.

  Open an example in Overleaf

Footnotes with multiple references

We can add several references to a single footnote mark

I'm writing something here to test \footnote{footnotes working fine} 
several features. You can write the footnote text\footnotemark in its 
own line.

\footnotetext{Second footnote}

For instance\footnotemark I can use the same footnote more than 
once\footnotemark[\value{footnote}].

\footnotetext{footnote with two references}

The command \footnotemark[\value{footnote}] inserts a superscript corresponding to the current value of the counter footnote.

  Open an example in Overleaf

Changing the numbering style

You can change the type of numbers printed by the footnote counter

\footnotetext{footnote with two references} 

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\roman{footnote}}
Now a footnote in Roman\footnote{This footnote is in Roman numerals}

The command \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\roman{footnote}} sets the number styles to lowercase roman. Other possible styles are:

• arabic Arabic numerals.
• Roman Upper case Roman numerals.
• alph Alphabetic lower case.
• Alph Alphabetic upper case.
• fnsymbol A set of 9 special symbols.

You can use this command in the preamble to change the numbering style of the footnotes in the whole document.

  Open an example in Overleaf

Further reading

For more information see:

• Margin notes
• Page size and margins
• Headers and footers
• Hyperlinks
• Counters
• Lists
• Font sizes, families, and styles
• Bold, italics and underlining
• Font typefaces
• Line breaks and blank spaces
• Management in a large project
• Multi-file LaTeX projects
• The not so short introduction to LaTeX2ε