Reduce footer space

Question

I am having trouble reducing the footer space. I have a list of contents that is printing below the page number appearing in the footer. How do I solve this issue? I tried setting the footskip length but it didn't work.

Answer 1

The parameter for setting the distance of the text block from the footnotes is called in a peculiar way: \skip\footins (the LaTeX kernel doesn't provide a symbolic name as for the others).

Here's an example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperwidth=6cm,paperheight=4cm]{geometry}

%\setlength{\skip\footins}{1cm}

\begin{document}

Some text\footnote{A footnote} to go all the way to the end of this short page and show the
distance from the footnotes. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

\end{document}

The two pages with the commented setting:

The two pages with the uncommented setting:

Answer 2

You should provide a minimal working example.

As for question, \footskip should be the distance from the bottom of the last line of text to the top of the foot.

\footheight is the height of the foot box, and will probably be more useful for what you want to achieve.

Also take a look at the fancyhdr package. Even you decide not to use it, it explains page elements nicely at the very beggining.