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On the following example, a footnote is defined near the top of page 1, but in the PDF file generated by pdflatex, it appears on page 2, while it could have been put on page 1. Note that both floating tables are important.

Why is the footnote not positioned on the page where it is defined (there is the room for that)? Is this regarded as a bug?

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\begin{document}

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text\footnote{Footnote.}

\[x\]
Text text text text text text text text text text text
\[x\]

\vspace*{370pt}

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text

\begin{table}
\caption{Text}
\end{table}

\begin{table}
\caption{Text}
\end{table}

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text

\end{document}
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  • You are insert too large vertical space. Replace vspace by \vfill to push text down.
    – Sigur
    Jan 27, 2015 at 16:25
  • 1
    @Sigur With \vfill, I can't reproduce the problem. Note that in the real article, there is no \vspace, there are text and equations; \vspace is only for the example, to show the problem.
    – vinc17
    Jan 27, 2015 at 16:29

2 Answers 2

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6

You should never have a blank line before a display equation it creates an anomolous white line (not vertical space) that is not wanted above the display and is not discarded at a page break.

Although even without that the specified space does not allow a footnote on page 1. there are two problems, to make it fit you have to take a single line of the paragraph over a page, and normally LaTeX tries to avoid doing this (\widowpenalty) secondly as there is not enough stretch space on the page to make up for the difference in line heights.

If you make TeX prefer rather than avoid widow lines then it fits (I don't recommend doing this, but to demonstrate the effect)

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\begin{document}

\widowpenalty-10000



Text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text\footnote{Footnote.}
\[x\]
Text text text text text text text text text text text
\[x\]

\vspace*{370pt}

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text

\begin{table}
\caption{Text}
\end{table}

\begin{table}
\caption{Text}
\end{table}

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text text

\end{document}

enter image description here

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  • 1
    Thanks for the tip concerning the blank line (though I never do that — I was not the author of this text). But the other part of your answer is not completely satisfactory because it appears that there is enough stretch space. This can be seen by removing the second table: the footnote is just moved to the first page, without creating a widow line (this is why I said in the question: "Note that both floating tables are important."). In any case, there seems to be an inconsistency.
    – vinc17
    Jan 27, 2015 at 23:27
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When you put the pages side by side you clearly see, that there would not be enough space on page one. And LaTeX does not like to break the "text"-block just to fit the footnote there, as this would produce bad typesetting. Changing the \vspace*{370pt} to a smaller value, e.g. \vspace*{360pt} solves the problem. Having a footnote occur on the next page is completely OK in terms of typesetting, should your figures then really force this to happen (as in your example).

enter image description here

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