Footnotes

Because long explanatory notes within the main body of a paper can be distracting to readers, APA style guidelines recommend the use of footnotes. In the text, place a superscript numeral immediately after the text about which you would like to include more information. Proper use of footnotes would include evaluative bibliographic comments and occasional explanatory notes or other brief additional information that would seem too digressive if included in the main text, but which might be interesting to readers.

Using footnotes, writers refer their readers to citations and reference lists by means of a number at the end of a sentence, phrase or clause containing the language or idea requiring citation. The number appears as a superscript numeral immediately after the text about which you would like to include more information. No space appears between the period and the superscript number. There should be four spaces between the last line of text and the first footnote on each page. Ideally, there should also be a horizontal bar separating the page text and the footnotes. Footnotes (and endnotes) appear with their corresponding superscript number and are written with the first line indented. The author's name appears in normal order (first name followed by last name)and separated from the other information with a comma. Publication data (City: Press, year) appears in parentheses, and no period is used until the very end of the citation. Footnotes are single-spaced with a double-space between each footnote. If necessary, a footnote can be carried into a subsequent page.