← All posts

Writing articles with footnotes & a bibliography

1 July 2026 · #guide #footnotes #references

---

This post is both a demonstration and a reference. It shows how to add footnotes and a bibliography to an article using nothing but Markdown — no special tooling, and it renders cleanly in both themes.

Footnotes

Add a footnote by putting a marker [^1] in your sentence, then defining it anywhere in the file.¹ You can reference several in a row,² reuse the same note twice,¹ and use descriptive names instead of numbers³ so they are easier to manage in a long article.

The reference is a small superscript link; clicking it jumps to the matching note at the bottom of the article, and the ↩ arrow there jumps you back to where you were reading. The numbering is generated automatically in reading order, so you never renumber by hand when you insert a new note.

How to write them

Coffee was central to Enlightenment sociability.[^1]

[^1]: The London coffeehouse doubled as a newsroom and debating floor.
[^chicago]: Named footnotes like `[^chicago]` render as numbers too —
    the label is just for you, the author.

A note can hold multiple sentences, links, and even multiple paragraphs — indent the continued lines by four spaces.⁴

Bibliography

Footnotes handle citations-in-passing well. For a formal list of sources, add a short Bibliography section at the end of the article. Wrap it in a <div class="references"> so it picks up the quieter reference styling:

Note that the automatic Footnotes list always renders at the very bottom of the page, so it will appear just below your Bibliography section — Notes first in the source, Bibliography above them visually is also fine to arrange to taste.

Footnotes

1. This is a footnote definition. It can appear anywhere in the file; all definitions are collected and rendered together at the end. ↩ ↩²

2. A second note, to show consecutive references. ↩

3. Chicago-style “notes and bibliography” pairs short footnote citations with a full bibliography — exactly the pattern shown here. ↩

4. A longer note.

   It can even span multiple paragraphs when you indent the continuation by four spaces, which is handy for a substantive aside or a full citation with commentary. ↩