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Don34862646jbr5
Inspiring
February 19, 2024
Question

Specifying a Single Footnote Number

  • February 19, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 1498 views

I'm working on a book. Some of it is text that I have written, and the footnote numbering should be sequential. Some of it is text from judicial opinions. I don't always include all of the court's footnotes in the quoted text, but the numbers of the footnotes I do include need to be the court's footnote number rather than a number in sequence with the footnotes of my own text. So, for example, if my text has notes 1 through 17 and I then insert a quotation from an opinion that has a single footnote in it--say footnote #3--how can I make that footnote call a 3 instead of 18? After the quotation, the sequential footnote numbering should pick up again at 18.

I may be explaining this badly. If I have a series of footnotes going from 1 to 17, and I add a footnote somewhere in that range, can I give the newly-added footnote its own special number without disturbing existing notes 1-17?

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2 replies

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
February 19, 2024

I'm not an expert in this field - but wouldn't it look much better - and be more practical - if you add this footnote as a part of the quote? Without mixing it with your footnotes? 

 

Then, you won't need to care for the numbering as it won't be "live" - be just some superscripted number in the quoted text - with corresponding number below this quote?

 

And reader will find it much quicker. 

 

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Don34862646jbr5Author
Inspiring
February 27, 2024

Thanks, Robert. It might be more practical, except that's not the publisher's format, and it would interrupt the text flow, just as it would if we instead put all footnote material as parenthetical expressions in the text. Footnotes, at least in the kind of writing I do, are really "asides."

 

On the bright(er) side, my experience of 40+ years of teaching is that most students don't read the footnotes anyway!

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
February 27, 2024

How about Anchored TFs to simulate additional Footnotes? 

 

Positioning them at the bottom of the page can be automated... 

 

Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
Peter KahrelCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 19, 2024

What you're after is perfectly clear. The answer is no, you can't do that the way you'd like to. InDesign's note numbers (of both footnotes and endnotes) can be set only once, at the level of the document. They restart numbering at every story.

 

To get what you want, it would be easiest (I think) simply to add a manual note reference (static, hard-coded) and add the note in a new paragraph in the previous footnote. So if you want to add a note 1 after note 17, insert a manual number in the text and add note 1 as a new paragraph in note 17. When you then add a footnote, it'll be number 18 and will be placed as expected.

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    Don34862646jbr5Author
    Inspiring
    February 27, 2024

    Hi, Peter,

    I admire the cleverness of your reply, but it assumes that the sequential and non-sequential footnotes appear on the same page of text. Sometimes that is true, but often it is not. That the numbering of footnotes exists at document level seems to me a non-problem. Adobe already has numbering for both footnotes and endnotes separately. Adding an end note does not increment the footnote numbering, and adding a footnote does not increment the endnotes. All the program needs is a second kind of footnote, coded at the document level, that does not increment the automatic footnote counter.

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