Say you’re writing an essay. You cite one line of the text you’re writing about, slap it in some quotation marks, and stick it in the middle of your sentence. (eg, men far more illustrious than Cato said “blah blah blah” and therefore that’s more important…).
Does the footnote go inside or outside the quotation marks?
I’d put it outside, because it’s not part of the quotation – and I’ve never seen a footnote symbol inside a quotation.
I would suggest putting it at the end of the sentence in which the quote appears rather than putting it immediately after the quote, unless it would be unclear what the footnote is referring to.
My personal preference is to put the footnote after the quotation mark, not at the end of the sentence, and certainly not at the end of the paragraph, which is an evil practice that seems to have become more frequent of late.
Another vote for definitely not in the quote because it’s not part of the quote. But I would also work to get the footnote at the end of the sentence in a way that was not confusing. In your example, I probably would say “Men far more illustrious than Cato said ‘blah blah blah’. [fn] Therefore, that’s more important . . . .” Or something. Stylistically, I don’t like footnotes in the middle of sentences. Ideally, the reader gets to the footnote., jumps down and reads it, and then picks back up with the text. If you put the footnote In the middle of a sentence, you are literally interrupting the sentence.
The footnote marker should come immediately after the quotation marks when the quotation is incorporated in standard explicatory text. After, because it’s not part of the quoted matter; immediately after, to tie it directly to the text quoted.
However, if a paragraph includes several short snippets quoted from the same source, such as “President Roosevelt called Pearl Harbor ‘a date which will live in infamy’ and spoke of his conviction that ‘the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory,’ asking the Congress to declare that ‘a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.’” – in such a case, with three short quotations from the same speech, I would put the footnote at the end of the paragraph, as referencing all three quotations in the paragraph.
Thanks. I’ve managed to rework it so that quote falls at the end of the sentence, hopefully that’ll survive my night-before-the-paper’s-due editing frenzy.