Remember to return the reference numbers to black.įor those of you who are not as practiced with InDesign, follow the steps below.

Then match the footnotes to the reference numbers.

Use two different sets of threaded text frames on each page: one for the main text, and a second one for the footnotes.

In InDesign, make all your reference numbers magenta so they are easy to spot.

Save all your footnotes in a separate Word document from the rest of your manuscript.

But if you’re only working on a single book or don’t want to spend any money, continue reading.įor those of you who know InDesign pretty well, here’s a quick summary: The method for typesetting InDesign footnotesįirst, I’ve discovered that you can automate much of the method explained below by purchasing an InDesign add-on called Footwork. The layout method for numbered InDesign footnotes is the main topic of this blog post. Your main text has reference numbers, each one with a corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page. In either case, you can follow “The method” below.

In the case of more than one note on a page, use these symbols in the following order (see page 348 in Book Design Made Simple), beginning again with a single asterisk on each new page:īut if you have one note-or more-on almost every page, that is probably too many, and you should go to a numbering system. Use asterisksįor a book with only a few footnotes, set an asterisk after each note and place the notes at the bottom of the relevant pages. We cover this topic thoroughly in chapter 29 of Book Design Made Simple.

The endnote solution is by far the easiest one if you are not using the automatic InDesign footnotes feature.

There are three basic ways: Use endnotesĪre your footnotes boring? Would general readers have a better experience if they didn’t have to see them on nearly every page? If so, consider putting the notes at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book. And that’s great! But what if you compiled your footnotes in a separate Word document or didn’t use the automatic footnote feature in Word or InDesign?īefore Word and InDesign added their automatic footnote features, and well before Fiona and I met each other, we both invented a way-interestingly, the same way-to lay out InDesign footnotes manually for print books. In this blog post, I’ll explain the layout method that we both used-it still works perfectly.īefore you start typesetting your footnotes, you need to decide how to handle them. If your book has footnotes, you’re probably using automatic InDesign footnotes in your layout.

How to make footnotes in word continue