Now that you know when you’ll use them, dive into how to write an example footnote citation for your MLA or APA paper. Basically, you’re just going to give your reader a little extra information that wouldn’t fit in the text.

You’ll only use MLA 8 or APA 7 footnotes to make bibliographic, content, or copyright notes. Remember that footnotes in MLA or APA are a rare occurrence. You would use this if you want to provide more information about the source or text.You were trying to get away from footnotes by creating your paper in MLA or APA format, but you just can’t avoid them. Annotations are footnotes with explanations or comments. The number directs the reader to the corresponding source in the footnote. Footnotes include a superscript number in the text rather than author name and date, and the source information is listed at the bottom of the page or document. Footnotes are useful when you want to insert a citation without interrupting the flow of the sentence or paragraph. These in-text citations refer the reader to the bibliography page for the full citation. The citation that includes the author and year would then come at the end of the statement in parentheses. You might use parenthetical citations when stating an idea, quote, or finding without mentioning the author or source name in the sentence. A parenthetical citation is similar to an in-line citation-it appears in the body text, and the author’s name and year of publishing are cited in parentheses. You might use in-line citations to introduce a statistic, quote, or finding along with the author’s name, and then you would cite it by including the year in parentheses. In-line citations occur within the text itself. In-text citations include both in-line citations and parenthetical citations, both of which you would use when quoting or taking an idea, thought, or fact from another author or source.

It includes all important components of the cited source, such as author name, title, publisher, publish date, page numbers, website URL, and DOI-the digital object identifier that acts as the document’s permanent ID on the internet. Full citations come at the end of the paper in the bibliography section.

Foot note citations