So while deciding whether or not to use a footnote, ask yourself the following questions: Particularly if you just want to cite a source, writing it inline within brackets might render the text incoherent, especially if you do it often. But, depending on the situation, this might be a little too distracting. Others suggest that you’re better off including the extra information at the same pace as the text in such scenarios. It breaks the flow compared to just reading a quick footnote that instantly scrolls to a separate portion of the page and back. I agree that the use-case scenario for footnotes on the web has decreased, but there are still situations where I think they’re useful.įirst, you might not want to send someone to another page entirely and force the browser to load a new page. Particularly on the web, where you can use hyperlinks to directly link someone to a new page within the text itself, rather than cite the source in a footnote. Some argue that footnotes are an anachronism that we don’t need anymore. When someone clicks on it, the browser will snap the viewport to the footnote, and then they can return back to where they were by using the back button. You can see that the numbered footnote links to the anchor text that you specified.

Create footnote in word