Best practice for adding footnotes

[mt.msla]

As title - kinda struggling with this. I'm editing an ebook for Kindle, and I've come across some curious behavior.

I'll post a link to another page using anchors, where all my footnotes are located. Sometimes the page changes as expected, and sometimes the Kindle just displays the anchor as a footnote.

Does anyone know of a "best practice" for adding footnotes? I'd appreciate any constructive instruction.

Thanks very much!

- Andy

[DiapDealer]

If epubs converted to Kindlebook formats require special code to make footnotes work properly, then you may need to ask in a Kindle, or epub forum, or the workshop forum. Sigil doesn't really concern itself with how converted epubs might function on Kindle devices. Our concern is with making spec-compliant epubs.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by mt.msla

Does anyone know of a "best practice" for adding footnotes? I'd appreciate any constructive instruction.

Just KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

Have 2 simple links:

• One <a> pointing to the footnote.
• One <a> pointing back to the footnote number.

Example code:

<p>This is some text with a note.<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a></p>

[...]

<p class="footnote"><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> This is the footnote.</p>

The red parts (fn) point back-and-forth to each other and say:

• "Hey! Go jump me to footnote 1!"
  
  • Wherever id "fn1" exists.

The blue parts (ft) point back-and-forth to each other and say:

• "Hey! Go jump me back to the number for footnote 1!"
  
  • Wherever id "ft1" exists.

- - -

Side Note: In your searches, did you happen to see the thread back in:

• 2022: "Footnotes: Best Practices?"

You can visit that for many more details.

(I just did a search in Google and see it's the #1 hit too. )

[Notjohn]

I now compose a lot in an old iteration of Word, using Mike Petrie's WordStar add-in to speed things along. I've found that Word's footnoting is brilliant. It needs a bit of editing before it looks right to me, but the go-to and go-back urls save a lot of effort on my part.

I do however move the go-back anchor back to the beginning of the sentence or paragraph, so the reader returns to a more logical spot rather than the actual footnoted word.

These are back-of-the book notes, not pop-ups.