Footnotes in Medium

Philip Siddons
Writers Guild
Published in
8 min readDec 11, 2019

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How to place footnotes and references in your Medium post

You can add citations in medium by using superscript numbers and notes that can appear below the numerical reference. But as much as they look like traditional footnotes, you are not making true footnotes. Since Medium doesn’t generate actual footnotes, you can achieve this by visually making what looks like a footnote. Your goal, however, is to give your readers annotations about your sources. So while Medium currently doesn’t generate true footnotes like Microsoft Word, you achieve this by making a super-scripted number (that you keep track of) and then produce the same super-scripted number below it, in a separate section, with the footnote annotation next to that number. (See the final note at the end of this posting to get a few resources about what to put in a footnote reference.

Thanks to Brian Dixon, on Medium, for posting an initial how-to piece on Footnotes. Here is the link. Because I’m a visual leaner, I made this piece for myself so that I could place Medium footnotes with greater ease.

To make your first visual representation of a footnote in Medium, decide where you want to place your first reference number. Let’s say that you want footnote #1 to be right at the end of a sentence. There, type the carrot symbol (^ character) [As a note, on a PC keyboard, the carrot symbol is the shift of the number 6 key on the top row of your keyboard.] Immediately follow the carrot symbol with the number you want (in this example, type “1” and then tap your space key. This will create a super-scripted #1 there. At the end of this sentence is the first footnote-looking number, like this.¹

Once you have finished your paragraph (at the end of which you want to place your first footnote), hit your “Enter” key. “This will display the “+” button (shown above) at the left side of that paragraph.

Click on this new section button (see red arrow in this screen shot) to create a new section divider and it will create a “…” separator (an ellipsis) below where you are standing. Under your ellipsis, which is actually a new section, you’ll type in your citation(s). This will serve as the visual equivalent of a footnote.

Now since you are not making an actual footnote in this new section, you will create what looks like a matching super-scripted number here to match the super-scripted number you made above in the body of your text. To do that, click on the left margin of the new section…

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Philip Siddons
Writers Guild

Working to create egalitarian communities which seek gender, racial & economic justice. Contact Options: http://connectedness.org