footnotes-examples

Footnotes Examples

Per the microformats process this is an examples page documenting existing real world examples of footnotes and endnotes published on the Web.

The Problem

How should footnotes and endnotes be marked up?

Participants

• Jeremy Boggs
• Andy Mabbett

Real-World Examples

Weblogs

• "Blank Slate" on Daring Fireball uses an ordered list for endnotes, and uses the ID attribute in a list item to link to a specific endnote. Also in the ID attribute is the date of publication, to differentiate footnotes if more than one publication (in this case blog posts) occur on a page.

<div class="footnotes">

  <hr />
   
    <ol>

    ...

     <li id="fn2-2007-03-04">
     <p>It took me six weeks to choose the exact shade of Daring Fireball’s 
     background color, <code>#4a525a</code>. 
     <a href="#fnr2-2007-03-04"  class="footnoteBackLink"  title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a>
     </p>
     </li>

     ...

    </ol>

</div>

Essays/Tutorials

• Dan Cohen's "The Future of Preserving the Past" uses the following markup for the initial reference in the main text, and the content for the footnote:

<sup><a href="#_edn4" name="_ednref4" class="enref" id="_ednref4">4</a></sup>

<p>
<sup><a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4" class="enref" id="_edn4">4</a></sup>National 
Institute of Standards and Technology, “Documentary Information Received by NIST,” 
<a href="http://wtc.nist.gov/media/docs_info_received.htm">
   http://wtc.nist.gov/media/docs_info_received.htm
</a>, accessed May 11, 2005.
</p>

• In "Scholarship on the Web: Managing Endnotes, Paula Petrik's basic CSS example uses the following markup for the footnote content:

<div id="footnotes">

  ...
  
  <p><a href="#fn2ref" class="note">2</a><a name="fn2text" id="fn2text"></a>
E. Landells, <em>The Boys’ Own Toymaker: A Practical Illustrated Guide 
to the Useful Employment of Leisure Hours</em> (London: Griffith and Farran, 
1860), vii.</p>

  ...

</div>

• Scholarship on the Web Superscripted Example add the <sup> element to superscript the note numbers.

<div id="footnotes">
  ...

  <p><sup><a href="#fn3ref" class="note">3</a></sup><a name="fn3text" id="fn3text"></a>
Paula Petrik, “The Paraphernalia of Childhood: Advice on Toys” from 
“Playthings for the Republic’s Children: American Culture, Toys, and the 
Business of Play,” unpublished manuscript.</p>

  ...

</div>

• Formatting Footnotes with JavaScript and CSS is a technique by Timothy Groves that displays footnotes inline with text, then hides/displays the note content with JavasCript. Groves uses the following markup structure:
  • This technique is problematic from a microformats perspective for several reasons: numbers are not used, each note does not have a unique ID, and its difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an annotation and the rest of the text without JavaScript and/or CSS.--JeremyBoggs 08:46, 14 Mar 2007 (PDT)

   <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...<span class="footnote">This is a footnote.</span>...</p>

Other

• West Midland Bird Club - Blithfield Reservoir: Survey of Flowering Plants
• Wikipedia
  • Guidance on footnotes, for Wikipedia editors
  • Wikipedia - Pink Floyd
    • Note bad accessibility practice of having same text linking to different targets, without even having differentiating title attributes.
    • Is this the common practice for articles on Wikipedia?--JeremyBoggs 13:43, 11 Mar 2007 (PDT)
      • See above.
• Interleave Notes Example
• Side Notes Example

Existing Practices

Common Patterns Discovered

• Use of "footnotes" as a class or ID attribute value for differentiating footnote content from the body of the publication.

Publications that discuss footnoting/endnoting on the web

• "About the Footnotes,"Daring Fireball by John Gruber
• "There is No Such Thing as a Footnote," Fawny by Joe Clark
• "Notes on Notes," Daring Fireball by John Gruber
• "Macro-Typography of Footnotes," by Jean-Baptiste Piggin.
• Scholarship on the Web: Managing Footnotes & Presenting Footnotes & Endnotes by Paula Petrik