How To Write A Strong Research Paper Using Footnotes: Tricks For Students


When you write your research paper you will have to cite the source of your information. It is imperative for every paper to have its bibliography. It is where all the citations are recorded. If you fail to mention the even one single sources of information then you can be accused of plagiarism and the whole work will go to vain. So you must remember to cite everything that you may have got from an outside source.

Importance of citation

Sometimes it is not possible to backtrack through the whole paper and find out all the information that might have come from some source. Moreover many a times it is hard to keep a record of all the manes of websites and pages from different books. So if you want to write a strong research paper, you will have to use footnotes. It is one of the best ways to keep track and maintain your citation without wasting your time.

When you write a footnote you mention the source of information at the bottom of the page. So when you are writing your bibliography all you will have to do is compile all the information from the footnotes into one page. This the best and only way of saving yourself all the trouble of going through the whole paper just find out which facts came from where. This are specially important if you are going to quote from some book or website So how do you write a footnote properly?

Here are a few steps to help you write proper footnotes:

  • The first thing you need to do is use word processing software that supports footnotes. This way it will be easier to manage. Most recent software has this feature.
  • When you copy a line or paragraph from some book, website, newspaper or any external source you will have to mention a number is superscript. The number will be like an index so the first time you copy something from external source it should be numbered 1. The next on one the page will be numbered 2 and so on.
  • At the bottom of the page you write the superscripted number and mention the name of the source from where the information was taken.
  • The citation should be accurate and have all the relevant data. Mention name of the author, name of book, publication, page number, website URL etc.



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