How To Add Footnotes In Your Blog Posts

Do you want to know, how to add footnotes in your blog posts? Well, you have come to the right place for the answer.

First, let’s understand what footnotes are & why do we need them.

What Are Footnotes And Why We Need Them

Footnotes are nothing but notes placed at the bottom of a page.

They are often put there as references to a designated part of the text in the above paragraphs.

It’s a common way to add citations to your content.

Footnotes are generally used to add comments & provide additional information on the content that you have.

By adding footnotes you website or blog can get a professional look.

For example, if someone publishes a research papers, then there usually are footnotes with citations.

How To Add Footnotes In Your Blog Posts

So, without further ado, lets see how to add footnotes to your wordpress blog posts.

Add Footnotes By Using A WordPress Plugin

The simplest way to add footnotes to your blog posts is by using a WordPress plugin.

We will be using the footnotes WordPress plugin, for this tutorial.

There are quite a few plugins available but, footnotes WordPress plugin is relatively easy to use, offers quite a few options & is totally free.

Install & Activate footnotes WordPress plugin. In case you don’t know how to install & activate a plugin check out our post on how to install & activate a WordPress plugin.

Once you are done with the activation, go to Settings » footnotes from your WordPress admin panel.

You will find various options to customize your footnotes.

You can select the start & end shortcodes for your footnotes from the dropdown menu.

Using these shortcodes, you’ll be able to add footnotes to your content.

As far as you remember what shortcode to use for adding a footnote, you can start using the plugin to add footnotes in your WordPress posts and pages. The remaining settings are completely optional, so you have a choice if you want to set up everything of just the basics.

Create a new post or edit an existing post to add your footnote. When you’re in the WordPress editor, simply add the shortcode you had selected for the footnotes.

If say, you choose double parenthesis as your shortcode, then insert it in the content where you want to add the footnote. You can then enter any text or URL of your source in the footnote.

Below is an example,

You can also customize your footnotes and change their appearance completely.

Go to the Settings => footnotes and click on the General settings tab.

You will see the settings for choosing a numbering style.

The plugin lets you choose from plain numbers, roman numerals, lower and upper case letters & much more.

You can also configure the scrolling behavior of your footnotes.

There are options to set up the scroll duration & add a time delay when a visitor clicks on a footnote.

The default heading title for your links in the footnote will be References, but, you can change the heading title if you want.

You can also choose how it is displayed in the References Container section.

The plugin offers many more settings, such as showing footnotes in excerpts, configuring the URL fragment ID settings, and enabling AMP compatibility mode.

When you’re done with the changes, click the Save Changes button.

Now you can go to the Referrers and tooltips tab.

Here you can change the backlink symbol that will appear in the footnote links.

The plugin also offers settings to enable tooltips, which is a text box that shows the link of your source when a user hovers over a footnote number.

You can change the tooltip position, dimensions, timing, text, and use other options for customization.

In the the Scope and priority tab, you can set the priority level which determines whether footnotes will run before other plugins.

Add Footnotes Manually

If you are familiar with HTML, you can easily add footnotes manually in your blog posts.

If you don’t have a proper knowledge of HTML then we would suggest adding footnotes with a plugin.

So, the first thing that you need to do is to create a blog post or edit one that you have already created.

Once you have opened the blog post in your WordPress editor head over to the content where you want your footnote to be.

Now go to your paragraph block & click on the three dots menu & select the Superscript option.

Again go to the three dots & click on Edit As HTML option.

Now, simply go ahead and enter the following HTML code along with your superscript number,

<a href="#wp-posts">[1]</a>

It will look something like the image below,

Now for the final step, Create a heading block “References” & add the following HTML code to block at the bottom of you blog post.

This will make sure that, when a user clicks on the footnote number, they will be taken to the corresponding URL.

Please note that the id = “wp-posts” in our case, so we will add the following code,

After you are done, Save The Changes.

You can now preview the changes made. It should look something like this,

Please Note: Don’t forget to replace links from this article, with your links.

Conclusion

Adding a footnote definitely gives a feel good factor to the website & makes it more trustworthy.

The method that you want to use for creating footnotes is completely upto you.

But, if you ask our opinion, we would suggest using a plugin for adding footnotes as its comparatively easy, doesn’t require coding knowledge & save a lot of time.