Footnotes of Awesome 95 members · 79 stories
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Footnotes. I could wax eloquent on why they are awesome, why we use them, and what we use them for. Since you’re already members of the Footnotes of Awesome group, I’ll spare you this redundancy.

Instead, I’d like to talk about how we use footnotes. “MyHobby,” you might say, “we use them to add in information that would otherwise clog up the narrative, or to add a humorous aside!”

To which I would say, “Hush up, random interrupter, and try not to be so literal.”

I mean how we place footnotes in our stories. Because Fimfiction does not separate chapters into pages, we are forced to discover new means of creating footnotes. Some place the notes at the bottom of the chapter. Some placed them in a quote box just after the indicated paragraph. Some place them in a separate chapter.

Nothing, unfortunately, is perfect.

(1): As you can see, this option places the footnote in a handy little text box that allows the actual prose to flow around it. This gives the illusion of the story not being interrupted by your additional notes.

I like to use the right insert (1) option to place my footnotes. All you have to do is surround the footnote with brackets that read like so: [ Right_insert][/ right_insert]. If you place the bracketed footnote above the paragraph in the code of your chapter, the footnote will appear alongside your original text. As long as you remember that the footnote needs to go first, you’ll be golden.

That’s my strategy, and it’s served me well so far. What about you? Have you a different solution? Do you have readers fawning over your footnote technique, rather than complaining about it? If so, share below!

horizon
Group Admin

3531997
Great topic!

[right_insert] is a great solution, and I'll definitely consider it for future stories that I footnote.

With 18th Brewmare, I borrowed the tactic GhostOfHeraclitus used in Whom The Princesses Would Destroy… — to accumulate them as endnotes and post them in a single separate chapter. This has some side benefits, such as making the footnotes less obtrusive for the strange people who don't like them, and if you open the footnotes up in a separate tab you can easily leap back and forth without losing your place. That's about as elegant as you're going to get without having them in the same location as the notemark.

The downside to this is that the story failed moderation because one of the FIMFic story approvers decided that my footnotes were properly "author's notes", never mind their strong interplay with the story, and did not deserve a chapter of their own. :facehoof: Fortunately, I got that straightened out.

3531997
3533716

I definitely agree with the separate chapter/tab method; it's better for allowing the story to flow without interruptions. And as horizon pointed out, it allows you to check back and forth, and it provides the reader the option of reading with/without the bibliography.

But I could definitely see the insert option (didn't even know that existed, thanks for informing me!) working well for other stories too, it depends on the type and quantity of your footnotes.

In the end, I guess you just gotta use what you feel works for your story.

Make a comment, link to it in the text. It should pop up when you mouse over.

horizon
Group Admin

3533882
That's a really interesting suggestion! It does actually work; you can see it in action here.

It does seem to have some downsides — for one, you're spamming your own comment section, since it works best with a single comment per note. It also prevents you from numbering footnotes; they have to show up like this: 3538753

But it also does something none of the other methods do — it works upon hover. Worth thinking about.

3533882
3538753
Does this work if you have multiple pages worth of comments on the section of the story?

horizon
Group Admin

3538998
I don't know for certain, but given that comments will hover correctly even if they refer to something that is on a previous comment page, my suspicion would be yes.

3540622
Clearly the best way to do this is to make a series of throwaway numbered accounts so that you can label your footnotes 1, 2, ect. :trollestia:

3531997
Well, I taught a few people that you can do this thanks to making a post on the writer's group forum. Too bad everyone was too distracted by the pretty footnotes to actually respond to the actual topic... :pinkiecrazy:

3538753
It works somewhat less well on a mobile device, though. You can't hover, so you have to tap to inline-expand it; which gives it essentially the same functionality as [foo_insert], except it breaks up the text.

I think Knighty broke this in the last update.

I suppose I should go bother him and see if he can fix it.

3773864

Not broken so much as disabled. See this comment...

--arcum42

3773899
Says there it should still work in stories, just not in comments or (apparently) forums.

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