Note (typography)

In publishing, a note is a brief text in which the author comments on the subject and themes of the book and names supporting citations.

Footnote reference numbers ("cues") in the body text of a page should be placed at the end of a sentence if possible, after the final punctuation.

This minimizes the interruption of the flow of reading and allows the reader to absorb a complete sentence-idea before having their attention redirected to the content of the note.

The MLA (Modern Language Association) requires the superscript numbers in the main text to be placed following the punctuation in the phrase or clause the note is about.

Aside from their technical use, authors use notes for a variety of reasons: The US Government Printing Office Style Manual devotes over 660 words to the topic of footnotes.

[11] Former Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States is famous in the American legal community for his writing style, in which he never uses notes.

The London printer Richard Jugge is generally credited as the inventor of the footnote, first used in the Bishops' Bible of 1568.

[18] Early printings of the Douay Bible used a four-dot punctuation mark (represented in Unicode as U+2E2C “⸬”) to indicate a marginal note.