What are footnotes? What are endnotes?
Both cite your source. The only difference between them is where they’re placed. A footnote gets a small-caps number in your text at the end of the material to which you’re referring. The citation appears at the bottom of the page. An endnote has the same number and bibliographic facts except it is on the last page of the chapter or the end of the paper/book arranged by chapters. (If by any chance, you’re on a deserted island with no electricity and only a manual typewriter, put the number a half-space above the line.)
End/footnotes are great for avoiding plagiarism – uh, such a nice word for stealing. In the notes, you come clean about borrowing phrases, ideas, whatever, and you give credit where credit should be given.
A variation on footnotes is the parenthetical citation. It appears in the body of the text and serves as a guide to the complete bibliographical entry.
These same sources should be listed in your bibliography.
If a something is common knowledge – George Washington was the first American president – you don’t have to credit a book with that. Even still, don’t lift the reference verbatim. Your own words, please.
The good news is carmun will put in footnotes for you. First, you must insert a footnote or endnote number using your word-processing program. To install Footnoter, click here.
Next, open Footnoter. Log in with your carmun user name and password.
Once in, select the style and your appropriate project list. Click on the citation. Instruct Footnoter to insert it as a footnote or abbreviated footnote (a second reference) on the page it should appear. Hit Insert, and yay, it’s in your document. That’s if you are using a PC. Mac people need to hit paste.
Note: Not all citation types are formatted in every style. For instance, other, lecture, artwork and broadcast interview are not footnoted in MLA. The apa style has no footnoting at all, only parenthetical references. Footnoter knows all and won’t let you footnote when you’re not supposed to.
You want footnote/endnote examples as per the styles offered by carmun – the ones teachers and professors ask for most frequently? You got ’em. Hit the links to see them.
