Footnotes and Bibliography: Definition, Writing and Examples

Someone must have asked, why in the storybook, there is writing like a bibliography. We certainly never thought that the writing did not give meaning to the text we read. However, these estimates turned out to be incorrect. The text below the reading text, which shows the name of the author, the title of the book, and friends, is called a footnote.

You must be curious about footnotes. This article will discuss footnotes. However, explaining the procedures for writing footnotes will not be complete, when it is not explained also about writing a bibliography.

Bibliography shows the origin of citations used by the author of the book. This bibliography has certain rules that are different from footnotes. Let us study these two things in this article.

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Footnote

Footnotes, are no stranger to us. Footnotes can be found under the writing in the book. Then what is meant by footnotes? How do you write footnotes? So that we understand footnotes, let’s understand the explanation of footnotes.

# 1 Definition of Footnotes

Footnotes are a statement that is listed at the bottom margin of the book page. In general, footnotes are written with letters smaller than the letters contained in the text. The aim is to add the references contained in the description in the main text.

# 2 Purpose of Use of Footnotes

Footnotes in a work have a specific purpose. These objectives are as follows.

  1. Footnotes as a place to expand the discussion needed. However, the discussion written in the footnotes is not relevant if included in the reading text.
  2. Footnotes to support the validity of the findings and statements of the authors included in the reading text.

# 3 Technical Writing Footnotes

Footnotes have techniques in their writing. The techniques in writing footnotes are as follows.

  1. The reference number written must be half a space higher.
  2. The author’s name does not need to be overturned and written in full.
  3. The title of the book is written in italics, if it is written using a program on a computer. Furthermore, if written manually or not using a computer program, it is simply underlined. In addition to books, such as articles in magazines, journals, and newspapers, source titles are placed in quotation marks (“…”). No need to be italicized or underlined, when the footnotes are not books.
  4. City published book
  5. The name of the book publisher
  6. Year of publication of the book
  7. The page number in the book
  8. All these elements are linked using commas (,). However, for the city of publication, after writing the city of issue for the book, it needs to be connected using a colon (:).

The writing of the title in the footnotes is adjusted to the rules in the essay, both fiction and nonfiction. The initial word of the title is written using capital letters. However, capital writing is not permitted on task words namely prepositions and conjunctions. The writing of the title does not end with the period punctuation.

Also read:  Ad Text: Definition, Structure, Characteristics, Functions, and Examples

# 4 How to Write Footnotes

There are various ways to write footnotes. Ways to write footnotes, which are as follows.

  1. Footnotes that use one author

1 H Applebaum, The American Work Wthic and The Changing Work Force: An Historical Perspective (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998), p.17.

  1. Footnotes that use two authors

2 J Casner – Lotto and L Barrington, Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21 st Century US Workforce (USA: The Conference Board, Inc., 2006), p. 49

  1. Footnotes that use more than two authors

3 Meredith D. G et al., Education Research: An Introduction , th Edition (USA: Pearson Education, Inc., 2003), p. 50

  1. The footnotes to which the next edition undergoes a change

4 Abdullah, History: Soekarno (rev.ed) (Yogyakarta: Meditama, 2009), p. 87.

  1. Footnotes that use an editor

5 Myint Swe Khint ed., Application of Structural Equation Modeling in Educational Research and Practice (Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2000), p. 25

  1. Footnotes which are translations

6 Callista Meyra, trans. Karina Nugraheni (Lombok: Media Books, 1998), p. 30

  1. Footnotes from a magazine or newspaper article

7 Dita Kartika, “Understanding the Ins and outs of the Indian Ocean”. Solopos, May 17, 2000, p. 6

After learning about the meaning of footnotes, other than that the elements contained in footnotes. In fact, the procedures for writing footnotes are different, based on the number of authors, translators, editors.

Therefore, understanding footnotes will be useful for us, before we write footnotes in the reading text that we compile. The next discussion, which is related to the bibliography.

Pay close attention to the discussion below, so as to understand the difference between footnotes and bibliography. However, it is also important to study  Extensive Reading and Recording Written Sources . So it’s better to learn too.

Definition and Writing of Bibliography

Bibliography is the author’s reference when conducting and compiling a study or report. Bibliography contains sources and other references that are used as a reference for writing a paper.

Bibliography is an important thing in scientific work. Without the presence of bibliography, the scientific work cannot be held responsible for the validity of the source used. Unfortunately, writing a bibliography does not have to be written in all scientific essays. Research reports in a laboratory do not need to use bibliography.

There are three main elements in the bibliography to show that the bibliography that we compiled, is quite good. These elements are the author, title, and publishing facts. The techniques of writing in the bibliography, are as follows.

  1. The author’s name is written by the author’s last name in front, then separated using commas (,).
  2. Year of publication of books and articles.
  3. The title of the book is written in italics, if it is written using a computer program. However, if written manually in the sense of not using a computer program, then the title of the book is written in the underscored way. If references are obtained from articles, magazines, and newspapers, the title of the article is given double quotation marks (“…”), without the need for italics or underlining.
  4. City published books and articles.
  5. The name of the book publisher and article.
  6. All elements are connected by using a period (.). As for the city where the book was published, it was connected using a colon (:).

Based on the explanation above, it can be seen that the bibliography is important in scientific work. Its presence is to provide clarity about the source of the book which is used as a quote by the authors of scientific papers. Writing a bibliography, also has various elements – certain elements that must be understood and applied, when writing literary works. Full discussion of bibliography diarticles How to Write  Bibliography .

by Abdullah Sam
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