Guides/Feature Workflows

Footnotes and Endnotes

Bottom-of-page print footnotes, tap-to-pop ebook notes, native Word footnotes

What footnotes do ↓Inserting and editing a note ↓Footnotes vs endnotes ↓Styling ↓How each format renders ↓Tips ↓

What footnotes do

A footnote is a short aside — a citation, a translation, a wry remark — anchored to a specific point in your text with a superscript marker. Nonfiction depends on them; plenty of modern fiction uses them for voice.

In Bookshaper you write the note once and every export renders it the way that format expects: at the bottom of the page in print PDF (with automatic continuation when a long note spills to the next page), as a tap-to-open popup in EPUB readers that support popup notes (Kindle, Apple Books) with a chapter-end fallback everywhere else, and as a real Word footnote in DOCX.

Inserting and editing a note

Place the cursor where the marker should sit, then right-click and choose Insert → Footnote, or press Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + N. A superscript marker appears and a small note editor opens beneath it — type the note, with bold, italic, and links available.

Click any marker to reopen its note. The popover also holds a footnote/endnote toggle for that one note, and a delete button. Markers renumber automatically as you add or remove notes; final numbering is assigned at export, where chapter boundaries are known.

Footnotes vs endnotes

A footnote renders where its marker lives — bottom of the print page, popup in ebooks. An endnote renders as the same superscript marker, but its text collects into a generated Notes section at the back of the book, grouped by chapter and styled by your Endnotes style target.

Convert a single note from its popover. Convert the whole book from the Style editor's Footnotes panel — both directions, any time.

Styling

The Footnotes style target controls the note text (font, size, spacing) and the indicator format: numbers, roman numerals, letters, or the traditional symbol sequence (*, †, ‡, §). Numbering can restart each chapter (the default) or run continuously through the book.

How each format renders

Print PDF
True bottom-of-page footnotes set by the typesetting engine — correct placement, automatic renumbering, and continuation across pages when a note is long.
EPUB
Markers become popup-note references (the EPUB 3 noteref standard). Kindle and Apple Books show the note in a popup without leaving the page; readers without popup support show the notes at the end of the chapter.
DOCX
Native Word footnotes — they appear in Word's footnote pane, renumber as you edit, and survive further editing or professional typesetting downstream. Word manages footnote numbering itself, so DOCX footnotes always number 1, 2, 3 continuously regardless of the indicator style chosen for print and ebook.

Tips

Keep popup notes short
Ebook popups are read in a small overlay. A sentence or three is ideal; a page-long essay reads better as an endnote.
Symbols suit sparse notes
The *, †, ‡ sequence is a classic look for books with only a handful of notes per chapter. If you footnote heavily, numbers stay clearer.
Check the print preview
The Write view shows scene-relative marker numbers. Open the print preview to see final page placement and book-accurate numbering.

Related guides

Preserved Lines

Author-controlled line breaks that survive every export

Printing and Saving PDFs

Print any analysis or planning view — or save it as a PDF — as a clean document

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