Editing Note (typography) (section)

== Academic usage ==
Notes are most often used as an alternative to long explanations, citations, comments, or annotations that can be distracting to readers. Most literary style guidelines (including the [[Modern Language Association]] and the [[American Psychological Association]]) recommend limited use of foot- and endnotes. However, publishers often encourage note references instead of parenthetical references. Aside from use as a bibliographic element, notes are used for additional information, qualification, or explanation that might be too digressive for the main text. Footnotes are heavily utilized in academic institutions to support claims made in academic essays covering myriad topics.

In particular, footnotes are the normal form of citation in historical journals. This is due, firstly, to the fact that the most important references are often to archive sources or interviews that do not readily fit standard formats, and secondly, to the fact that historians expect to see the exact nature of the evidence that is being used at each stage.

The MLA (Modern Language Association) requires the superscript numbers in the main text to be placed following the punctuation in the phrase or clause the note is about. The exception to this rule occurs when a sentence contains a dash, in which case the superscript would precede it.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Lab|first=Purdue Writing|title=MLA Endnotes and Footnotes // Purdue Writing Lab|url=https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_endnotes_and_footnotes.html|access-date=2022-01-11|website=Purdue Writing Lab|language=en}}</ref> However, MLA is not known for endnote or footnote citations, and APA and Chicago styles use them more regularly. Historians are known to use Chicago style citations.

Aside from their technical use, authors use notes for a variety of reasons:
* As signposts to direct the reader to information the author has provided or where further useful information is pertaining to the subject in the main text.
* To attribute a quote or viewpoint.
* As an alternative to parenthetical references; it is a simpler way to acknowledge information gained from another source.
* To escape the limitations imposed on the [[word count]] of various academic and legal texts which do not take into account notes. Aggressive use of this strategy can lead to a text affected by "foot and note disease" (a derogation coined by [[John Betjeman]]).<ref>{{cite journal|last=Rogers|first=Timothy|title=Rupert Brooke: Man and Monument|journal=English|year=1968|volume=17|issue=99|pages=79–84|doi=10.1093/english/17.99.79}}</ref><ref>
Candida Lycett Green (Betjeman's daughter), quoted in [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/passedfailed-an-education-in-the-life-of-candida-lycett-green-writer-475699.html "Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Candida Lycett Green, writer"], interview by Jonathan Sale. ''The Independent'', Thursday 27 April 2006.</ref>