Position of Footnote on Page

Question

This question isn't about a case that I have a problem with; it's just a purely hypothetical thing that I've been thinking about.

Suppose you are writing a book or maybe an article for a journal. At the bottom of a page - the last line - you have a sentence that you want to put a footnote on. However, because you're on the very final line, if you put in place the space for a footnote (even a one line footnote), then the original line would move to the start of the next page. As such, the footnote should then be on the next page... freeing up the space for the line to return to its original space!

Basically, my question is just 'what do you do here'? I would imagine you put the footnote marker on the sentence in the original place (bottom of page), and then the footnote goes at the bottom of the next page. This is just my guess though.

Sorry about the lack of tags: if you can think of any others that I should have tagged it with, then feel free to add them in! :)

Also, I've migrated this from 'english.SE'. Hopefully this site is better for it. :)

Answer 1

Choice 1: Move the last line and the footnote to the next page. This will leave a little blank space on the original page. If you want an even bottom margin, increase the line spacing, or move some text from the previous page to the current page, which means moving text from the page before that, etc, and reformatting the entire chapter.

Choice 2: Put the footnote on the facing page.

I'd vote against any solution that puts the footnote marker -- the asterisk or superscript or whatever -- on a right-hand (recto) page and the footnote text on the following page. That would be confusing to the reader.

Answer 2

Usually you should avoid orphaned footnotes. I do not remember ever having seen a professionally published book where the footnote started on another page as the text it referred to.

But this is something the publisher and their typesetter or book designer take care of. It shouldn't concern any writer, who has to hand in a plain, often even markup-free manuscript.

If you self publish, you have several options, all of which have disadvantages:

• change image size

  If your book has images, graphics, tables, or inset text boxes that your main text flows around, an easy solution is changing the size of one of these objects preceding the problematic passage. If your book does not have these, you must change aspects of the text itself:

• increase or decrease letter spacing

  Sometimes this makes a lonely word slip up one line. If you change letter spacing by between 0.1 to 0.5 point, most readers won't notice, but if you look at your book with squinted eyes, that paragraph might look a bit darker and the text more "hurried". Other options certainly don't make typographers frown so much.

• increase or decrease word spacing

  Word spacing is variable in justified text, because otherwise a ragged right margin would be unavoidable. Changing this value slightly will be equally (un)recognizable, but has the advantage of not changing the legibility and kerning of the words. If you do that for a whole paragraph, you can save a line or make it a line longer.

• change line spacing

  You can only do this if the paper is thick enough so the text on the other page does not shine through, and you must do it for both facing pages, otherwise this will look strange. Also, it works better on pages with lots of lines. If your book is small and the text large, don't do this, because it will be recognizable.

• change size of the type area (or "page margins", if you think Word) in the whole book

  This will of course change text flow in the whole book, too, but with some luck there is a setting where there are no orphans. Again, a typographer with a trained eye will cry if you do that, but most published books aren't well layed out anyway, and especially trade paperbacks often have text that runs within a few millimeters of the margins, so readers usually are used to this look and won't mind it as much.

  You can of course play with all the text settings mentioned above – word spacing, letter spacing, and line height – in all of the book. This will make the change unnoticeable (because everything looks the same), but if the change is large it will make all of the book unappealing. It might be better to:

• use a different font

  Some fonts come with different letter widths (ultra condensed, extra condensed, condensed, semicondensed, regular, semiexpanded, expanded, extra expanded, ultra expanded), so this will allow you to have a very similar "look" but different amount of text in one line. If your font doesn't come in different letter widths, often there are clones of that font that don't have the exact same font metrics, or you can try a completely different font altogether. As with all book-wide changes, this may or may not lead to a good layout, depending on your luck.

• change the text

  Since you self publish anyway, you are not limited by the sanctity of the text that a typesetter has to respect. This is regularly done in newspaper and magazine publishing, where tests are written to be cropped, but a no-no in literature. But if it's your own text and you are more concerne with orphans than composition, simply change a few words, and your text will flow as you want it. This might be the easiest, quickest, and least frustrating solution, except for the last:

• don't give a wet fart

  Why would you worry about one footnote? Invest your time and energy into writing your next book. Content is what satisfies your readers and makes them buy your books. We are in it for the money, and 80-20 is good enough for becoming rich, as all those best-selling books will show you. (Meaning: get 80% of the money by delivering a 20% book, of course. ;-)

Answer 3

Cheat and edit your text. Or keep combing backwards through your layout, either pushing a few lines forward or bringing a few lines back, until your footnote and the referent are on the same page.

Answer 4

I've seen this situation in Bibles handled by 'forcing' the annotated text to the following page, leaving a blank space at the bottom of the page.

If this looks 'off', you may want to distribute this blank space between the lines of text or halve it, top and bottom.