I have a footnote that begins on one page but the text runs over onto the footnote section of the page afterwards. Any way to fix this? I'm using footmisc
and the oneside
book
class.
4 Answers
The TeX FAQ has some information on this.
The easiest (and most brutal) thing they suggest is setting \interfootnotelinepenalty=10000
, which will prevent the footnote from breaking across pages.
Alternatively, they suggest adjusting the space on the page (using \enlargethispage{<length>}
), to force the line with the footnote onto the next page.
And here's an example what an MWE could look like, which makes it possible to try out different solutions:
\documentclass[oneside]{book}
\usepackage{lipsum}
% \usepackage[splitrule]{footmisc} %% The splitrule option draws a full width rule above the continued part of the footnote as a visual cue to readers.
% \interfootnotelinepenalty=10000 %% Completely prevent breaking of footnotes
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-3]
\lipsum[1]
New paragraph, which is really long, so long in fact that it spans more than one line. New paragraph, which is really long, so long in fact that it spans more than one line.
\footnote{Here's a really long footnote that will probably be longer than one line, which could help to show the problematic behaviour.} % \enlargethispage{-\baselineskip} %% move one line (and the footnote) onto the next page
\lipsum
\end{document}
-
11I don't see how I would ever want a footnote to break across pages, so setting
\interfootnotelinepenalty=\@M
works for me.– MatejSep 23, 2014 at 15:24 -
1
-
1Your description "adjusting the space on the page (using
\enlargethispage{<length>}
), to force the line with the footnote onto the next page" implies that footnotes spill content over to the next page only when the footnote belongs to the final line of a page. That's far from always being the case (in my experience, it's rarely the case). I have a document here where the footnote belongs to the first line on the page, yet the footnote spills over to the next page. What's worse, 98% of the footnote remains on the first page, and the only thing that spills over are two short numbers .. :(– SverreSep 3, 2015 at 15:29 -
Ditto to @Matej Excuse the long-delayed comment, but I was just now googling this problem, and it coughed up your answer. \interfootnotelinepenalty=10000 worked immediately and perfectly for me, too (just cut-and-pasted it; didn't even have to type it:) Any particular reason why it's "brutal"? Jun 8, 2020 at 4:17
-
2@Matej I thought that I would never want a footnote to break across pages, until I saw the footnote being moved to the next page leaving a giant white-space gap on the previous one... Apr 13, 2021 at 2:09
Since you're already using the footmisc
package, you may want to load it with the option splitrule
. Doing so will place a full-linelength line ("rule" in typographic jargon) above the split-off part of a footnote that's split across two pages. This is a frequently-used solution in the publishing industry to indicate to readers that the footnote material at the bottom of a page is a continuation of something that was started on the preceding page.
More information on the subject of split footnotes and how to best deal with them is available at Why does LaTeX split footnotes across pages? from the TeX FAQ list (formerly known as the "UK TeX FAQ list).
-
1
-
-
1@derbender - Updated the link. You could have found it too, in 3 seconds or less, simply by googling "UK TeX FAQ LaTeX split footnote". I guess you get more utility out of being snarky and polemical than out of being helpful and constructive. Keep it up -- you'll go far.– MicoJul 6, 2020 at 16:59
To find broken footnotes (first step before fixing, if it isn't done globally), you can use the fnbreak package.
One approach is to adjust the margins of the document layout, so that the footnote fits on the same page. This can be done for either the entire document, with the command
\usepackage[margin=0.9in]{geometry}
or be done for a given scope of the document,
\newgeometry{includefoot,left=2cm,right=2cm,bottom=1cm,top=2cm}
% content of the page where the footnote occurs
\restoregeometry
Issue with the latter solution is that a new blank page is created when the command \newgeometry
is used, and in general the command affects the entire page layout. In order to limit the scope to a certain part of the page, the following answer on this post
newgeometry makes content run to next page
can instead be used. The adjustwidth
command temporarily changes the text area width.
lipsum
package, which allows you to insert blind text. Using the command\lipsum
you get about one page of blind text, using\lipsum[1-3]
you get the first three paragraphs of the same text. That should enable you to build an MWE.