How to Add Chicago Style Notes in Microsoft Word

Footnotes may not be a critical aspect of writing, but they can be extremely helpful in reducing clutter without having to excise important asides or explanations, a practice that can be useful in academic writing and elsewhere.

Footnotes can also make your work appear more professional, lending you credibility as a writer and/or researcher. Unfortunately, many writers don't know how to footnote documents, and that It's a shame because it's actually quite simple..

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When to use footnotes

To get started, let's clear up some common misconceptions about what footnotes actually are.

• Footnotes are notes at the bottom of the current page that provide additional comments or information about a particular word or phrase in the body of the main text.
• Endnotes are notes at the End of an entire chapter, document, or book. which serve the same purpose as footnotes without affecting page layouts.
• Appointments they can be footnotes or endnotes, but point to references and resources rather than comments or additional ideas.

Not sure if learning how to make and use footnotes correctly is worth your time and effort? Here are some scenarios where they might be useful:

• Parenthetic explanations - When you're writing a research paper or essay Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word:The Research Deathmatch Writing Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word:The Research Deathmatch, online solutions are becoming the rule. We decided to see how Microsoft Word compares to Google Docs. Which one will do the best investigative work? Read More Footnotes are cleaner than parentheses..
• Word count limits - For example, when submitting to an academic or legal journal, you may need to adhere to maximum word counts, and since these limits generally don't count footnotes, this is one way to get more of your thoughts ..
• Quotes and attributions. - If you ever include a direct quote in your document, you must cite it. There are many ways to do this, but the easiest is to simply mark the citation with a footnote that attributes the citation to whatever resource it came from.
• Literary device - Fiction writers have used footnotes inventively, such as to flesh out the details of fantasy worlds, to break the fourth wall, or even to inject comic commentary and commentary.

The Chicago style of footnotes

Once you've decided to learn and use footnotes, you'll need to decide which style of footnotes works best for you when citing or attributing:APA, MLA, Chicago, and others.

For this post, we'll focus on Chicago Style, 16th Edition:

• Footnote numbers start with 1 and increase in consecutive order with each additional note.
• Footnote numbers go at the end of clauses or sentences . For punctuation, footnote numbers go after all punctuation .
• Footnote numbers are superscript .
• In the footnote, start with the footnote number followed by a period or start with the footnote number as a superscript with the rest of the footnote in full size.
• The first line of a footnote is indented by 0.5" . The rest of the footnote should be flush to the left with the first line of indentation.
• Footnotes should be separated by empty lines .
• If a footnote contains citations and annotations, the citation comes first and is separated from the annotation by a single period.

Pretty simple, right? Current citation guidelines are a bit more complex and differ depending on the type of resource you're citing, so check the Chicago Manual of Style.

Here's an example of a footnote in action, showing both the body text and the footnote, taken and modified from the Research Guide:

How to use footnotes in Word

And now for the pièce de résistance:how to actually incorporate these footnotes into your Word documents. The good news is that this is the easiest part!

As a result, Word automates most of the footnote process. so you don't have to worry about formatting, most of your energy will be focused on staying true to whatever style you're using.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Place the cursor in the body text where you want the footnote superscript to appear.
2. Select the References tab on the ribbon toolbar.
3. Click Insert footnote . This will immediately take you to the bottom of the page with the correct footer number to use.
4. Write your footnote according to the style.
5. Repeat the process for each additional footnote. Word will automatically increment the number for you.

To use endnotes instead of footnotes, click Insert Endnote instead of Insert Footnote. It really is that simple.

Here's a good trick to know: Hovering over a footnote number in the body text will bring up a tooltip with the full footnote, so you don't have to keep scrolling up and down to review footnotes when reading or typing .

Here's another trick: press F5 to open the Go To tab of the Find and Replace window. Select Note and type the number of the footnote you want to edit, and Word immediately takes you to the page you're on.

Other Microsoft Office tricks to learn

This is just one of the many features in Word that can make your writing easier. Consider incorporating these Word productivity hacks 10 Simple Microsoft Word Hacks Everyone Can Do 10 Simple Microsoft Word Hacks Everyone Can Do Our knowledge of Microsoft Word is tested every time we have a document to work on. Every little tip learned along the way helps. How about ten more hacks for your daily productivity? Read More You're fine as long as you activate a document and just type. But Microsoft Word wouldn't be the Swiss knife without its productive features. Read More We uncover the forgotten features of Microsoft Office and show you how they could improve your workflow. Read More

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Hopefully this post has helped! If there are any other features in Word that you would like to know more about, please tell us in the comments!