How to Format Footnotes and Endnotes in Print and Ebook

Footnotes and endnotes exist to let you say something without saying it in the main flow of your sentence: a source citation, a translation, a definition, an aside that would slow the main text down if it stayed inline. Both do the same basic job, giving the reader an optional detour, but they place that detour in different spots on the page, and that placement changes how each one reads, how each one is built, and which genres tend to favor one over the other.

This guide covers the real difference between footnotes and endnotes, when each fits your book, how to format both correctly in a print interior, how ebook formatting for notes works differently because EPUB has no fixed pages, numbering schemes, and the mistakes that most often make notes harder to use rather than easier.

Footnotes vs endnotes: what's actually different

Footnotes appear at the bottom of the same page as the text they reference. The reader glances down, reads the note, and looks back up, all without leaving the page. This is convenient for short notes the reader is likely to want in the moment, a citation, a brief clarification, a quick translation of a foreign phrase.

Endnotes are collected together at the end of a chapter or at the end of the whole book, rather than at the bottom of each page. The reader has to flip (or in ebook terms, jump) to a separate section to read them, then find their way back to where they were. This is less convenient for casual reference but keeps the main page uncluttered, which matters more in books where notes are frequent or lengthy.

Neither is more correct in general. The right choice depends on how often your book uses notes, how long they typically run, and how much the reader is expected to actually stop and read them versus treat them as optional backup.

When to use footnotes vs endnotes by genre

Fiction with worldbuilding asides: some fantasy, historical fiction, and satirical novels use footnotes as a stylistic device, an aside from a narrator, a wry translator's note, a piece of invented lore. Because these notes are meant to be part of the reading experience in the moment, not skippable reference material, footnotes usually work better than endnotes here: the joke or aside lands right where the reader is, rather than requiring a trip to the back of the book that breaks the rhythm entirely.

Academic and heavily cited nonfiction: a work that cites sources frequently, sometimes several times per page, tends to favor endnotes, or footnotes kept deliberately brief (often just a citation, not commentary). Frequent, lengthy footnotes can make a page feel cluttered and interrupt reading flow; grouping full citations as endnotes keeps the main page clean while still giving a rigorous reader everything they need, just one section away.

General nonfiction with occasional notes: a memoir, a business book, or a popular history title that cites a source now and then, rather than constantly, usually reads well with light footnotes: infrequent enough that they don't clutter the page, and useful enough at the point of reading that sending the reader to the back of the book for each one would be more disruptive than helpful.

Print formatting conventions for footnotes

A well-formatted footnote follows a few consistent conventions:

• A visual divider above the note: a short horizontal rule separating the footnote area from the body text on the page, so the reader's eye clearly registers a shift from the main narrative to reference material.
• Smaller type than body text: footnotes are conventionally set a size or two smaller than the body font, reinforcing that they're supplementary rather than part of the primary reading flow.
• Consistent numbering markers: a small superscript number (or in some styles, a symbol like an asterisk or dagger for a single note per page) in the body text, matched to the same marker at the note itself.
• Notes stay on the same page as their reference: this is the entire point of a footnote, and it's handled automatically by proper interior layout software, which recalculates footnote placement as text reflows during editing. Manually placing footnote text at a fixed spot on a page, without that automatic pagination logic, is fragile and breaks the moment anything else on the page changes length.

Print formatting conventions for endnotes

Endnotes are typically collected in a dedicated back-matter section, organized in one of two common ways: grouped by chapter (with a chapter heading in the endnotes section, followed by that chapter's notes in order) or as one continuous sequence for the whole book. Grouping by chapter is generally easier for a reader to navigate in a long nonfiction book, since they can find the chapter they're curious about rather than scanning a single undifferentiated list of a few hundred notes.

Each endnote entry should repeat enough context to be usable on its own, since the reader has left the original page behind: a brief indicator of what part of the text it relates to (a page reference or a short quoted phrase, depending on your citation style) alongside the note content itself, rather than just a bare number with no anchor back to its source.

EPUB and ebook formatting for notes

Print footnotes rely entirely on a fixed page: the note sits at the bottom of the specific page that contains its reference. EPUB has no fixed pages by design, reflowable text means the same paragraph might land at the top of a screen on one device and the middle of a screen on another, so there is no stable "bottom of the page" for a footnote to live on.

The practical solution is that both footnotes and endnotes become the same thing in EPUB: a linked, jumpable reference. The superscript marker in the text becomes a hyperlink to the note's content, wherever that content physically lives in the file (often at the end of the chapter), and the note itself links back to the exact point in the text the reader came from. This works regardless of whether you conceptually think of your notes as "footnotes" or "endnotes," the underlying EPUB mechanism for both is an internal link pair.

EPUB 3 popup-note behavior

EPUB 3 defines a specific semantic structure for notes, using epub:type attributes (epub:type="noteref" on the reference link and epub:type="footnote" on the note itself) that tells a reading app the linked content is a note rather than a general cross-reference. Reading apps that support this convention, several popular ones do, display the note in a small popup overlay right where the reader tapped, rather than navigating away from the page entirely. This gives footnote-heavy nonfiction in EPUB something close to the print footnote experience: a quick glance at the note without losing your place, even though the underlying file has no fixed pages. Not every reading app supports the popup behavior, but the link still works as a plain jump-to reference in apps that don't, so the fallback is reasonable rather than broken.

Numbering schemes: continuous vs per-chapter

Continuous numbering runs one sequence through the entire book, note 1, note 2, and so on, all the way to the end, regardless of chapter breaks. This works well for books with a moderate total number of notes, where a reader (or the author, during editing) can reasonably track a single running sequence.

Per-chapter numbering restarts at 1 for each new chapter. This is generally the better choice for books with a large total number of notes, heavily cited academic or reference nonfiction, in particular, since continuous numbering into the hundreds becomes unwieldy and makes inserting or removing a note mid-book (which then renumbers everything after it) a bigger editing burden. Restarting per chapter also makes each chapter's endnotes section easier to scan, since the numbers stay small and clearly tied to that chapter's content.

Whichever scheme you choose, apply it consistently through the whole book. A mix of both, continuous in some chapters and restarting in others, is one of the more confusing and avoidable formatting inconsistencies a reader can run into.

Common mistakes

Frequently asked questions

Can a single book use both footnotes and endnotes?

It's uncommon but not unheard of, typically reserved for a book with two clearly distinct kinds of notes, brief citations as footnotes and longer discursive asides as endnotes, for instance. For most books, picking one approach and applying it consistently is the more readable choice.

Do ebook footnotes need to look different from ebook endnotes?

No. Since EPUB has no fixed pages, both become linked, jumpable references built the same way under the hood. The distinction between "footnote" and "endnote" that matters in print largely collapses into a single mechanism in ebook formatting.

What numbering symbol should I use, numbers or asterisks?

Numbers are the standard choice for any book with more than a small handful of notes, since symbols like asterisks and daggers run out quickly and are conventionally reserved for pages with only one or two notes total. Use numbers unless your citation style or genre convention specifically calls for symbols.

Should footnotes count toward my word count or page count?

They're part of your manuscript's total content and will affect your book's final page count in print, but they're not usually counted the same way as body text when authors discuss a book's word count informally. What matters practically is that your interior design accounts for the space footnotes take up on the page, which affects pagination.

How many footnotes are too many?

There's no fixed number, but if footnotes are appearing on the majority of pages and running more than a line or two each, it's worth asking whether some of that material belongs in the main text, in endnotes instead, or should be cut. Frequent, lengthy footnotes are one of the more common reasons readers describe a nonfiction book as feeling cluttered or hard to read.

The bottom line

Footnotes and endnotes solve the same underlying problem, giving a reader optional supplementary information without disrupting the main text, but they do it in different ways that suit different genres and different note lengths. In print, the formatting conventions (dividers, smaller type, consistent numbering) keep notes distinct and usable. In EPUB, the fixed-page concept disappears entirely, and both kinds of notes become linked references, with EPUB 3's popup-note behavior offering a closer approximation of the print footnote experience where reading apps support it. Whichever type and numbering scheme you choose, consistency through the whole book is what keeps notes useful rather than distracting.

For more on ebook structure and semantic markup generally, see our EPUB formatting best practices guide. If your book also includes a bibliography or works-cited section, our companion guide on how to format a bibliography covers the layout conventions there. For the front and back matter every nonfiction book tends to need beyond notes, see front matter and back matter every book needs. To format footnotes and endnotes correctly across both a print interior and an EPUB from the same manuscript, get started in LiberScript.