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Footnotes & citations

When your writing needs an apparatus — an aside at the foot of the page, a source credited in the text, a reference list at the back — φ has it built in. Footnotes and citations are part of the document, so they survive every export and land in the right place in the finished book.

Footnotes​

A footnote is a small numbered marker in your text with a note attached. The marker shows only the number; the note's text lives off to the side so it never breaks the line you're reading.

Inserting a footnote​

Type /footnote and choose Footnote from the slash menu. φ drops a numbered marker at the cursor. Numbering is automatic and stays in order — insert a footnote earlier in the document and everything after it renumbers itself.

The Footnotes panel​

The marker carries the note's text, but you don't edit it inline. Instead, open the Footnotes panel in the right sidebar, where every footnote in the document is listed in order:

  • Edit a note by typing in its text box.
  • Jump to a marker by clicking its number — useful in a long document.
  • Remove a footnote with the trash icon. The remaining footnotes renumber automatically.

In reading mode the panel is read-only — you can navigate but not edit.

How footnotes export​

Where a footnote ends up depends on the format:

  • PDF — true per-page footnotes. Each note is pinned to the bottom of the page its marker sits on, with a thin rule above it, the way a printed book does it.
  • DOCX, EPUB, HTML, Markdown — notes are collected as endnotes (or the format's native footnote, in Markdown's ^[…] style).

Citations​

A citation credits a source in author–year style — (Smith, 2020) — drawn from a small source library kept with the document. You build the library as you write, then reuse sources across the document.

Adding a citation​

Type /citation and choose Citation. The citation dialog opens:

  • Pick an existing source from the list to cite it at the cursor. Sources are sorted by author surname; the search box filters by author, title, or year.
  • Add a new source with New source. Fill in Author (e.g. Smith, Jane), Title, Year, and an optional URL, then Add & cite. The source is saved to the library and the citation is inserted in one step.

You only need an author or a title to save a source.

Editing and managing sources​

Click any citation in the text to reopen the dialog in edit mode. From there you can:

  • Edit the source's details — author, title, year, URL. The change updates every citation that points at that source.
  • Swap the citation to a different source by picking another from the list.
  • Remove the source entirely with Remove source.

The source library belongs to the document, so a source defined in one document isn't shared with another.

The bibliography​

A bibliography is a reference list generated from your citations — you never type it by hand. Type /bibliography and choose Bibliography to place the block.

The list is built automatically from the sources you've actually cited: each entry is formatted as Author. (Year). Title. URL, and entries are sorted alphabetically by author surname. Sources in the library that you haven't cited don't appear. Cite a new source and it's added the next time the list renders.

When you export a book or manuscript, the bibliography opens on its own page at the end — with no stray blank pages before it in the PDF.

See also​