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Inserting Footnotes in Word

This process should work for most versions of Word, but if you see a step that doesn’t ring true for your version, I recommend Googling the following: “insert footnotes” + the name of your version of Word (which you can find while in Word by clicking on the Word menu, then selecting “About Word”). If you can’t find a good tutorial that way, email me and I’ll help.

1. Position your cursor at the end of your sentence. (Generally speaking, footnote numbers should appear outside the closing punctuation mark of the sentence containing the quote or information that you’re citing.)

2. Navigate to the Word menu “Insert,” then select “Footnote.”

3. This box will pop up. Select “Footnote” (for this particular paper, we’re using footnotes rather than endnotes). Select “Auto Number.”

4. A superscript number—a little number positioned above the line of text—will appear where the cursor was, and you’ll be brought down to the bottom of the page, where another superscript number will appear. Here is where you’ll type your footnote. (Or, where you’ll insert the footnote text that NoodleBib has helped you to generate.)

5. A note on repeat citations: After you insert the first reference to your source, if you’re citing it again, you should use only the author’s last name and the new page number (ex: “Richardson, 120”). If you cite the same source twice in a row, the second time you cite it, you should use the word “Ibid” (means “the same place” in Latin), with the new page number (ex: “Ibid, 340”).

6. And finally: If you move a footnote number around while you’re editing your paper (say, by copy-and-pasting a block of text that contains one of the superscript numbers), the text at the bottom of the page will move along with the number. This means that if you have repeat references, as described above, and you move things around, your repeat references will be out of order. So, for example, the truncated footnote “Richardson, 120” will appear before the footnote with all of the book’s complete publication information. Make a final footnote check before you turn your paper in, to make sure everything’s the way it should be.

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