Customizing the symbol next to the author's name in a document

Question

I would like to choose the symbol appearing next to the author's name of a document (for example, I would like to put a dagger instead of a star). Here is an example showing how one can proceed to choose the symbol for the command \footnote : Symbols instead of numbers as footnote markers

Problem is that it fails when used in the \author environment. I can not use the above example if I use \thanks instead of \footnote.

Here is a minimal example :

---

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,two column]{article}
\usepackage[symbol]{footmisc}

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}


\begin{document}
\author{Nicolas\footnote[2]{Ask a question}}
\title{Minimal Example}
\maketitle

\end{document}

Answer 1

The article documentclass offers the \thanks command for footnotes within the author. These footnotes are automatically labelled by a symbol chosen from the following list (in the given order): *, †, ‡, §, ¶, ‖, **, ††, ‡‡.

If you want your first footnote to be labelled by † rather than *, you could change the following original definition:

\def\@fnsymbol#1{\ensuremath{\ifcase#1\or *\or \dagger\or \ddagger\or
   \mathsection\or \mathparagraph\or \|\or **\or \dagger\dagger
   \or \ddagger\ddagger \else\@ctrerr\fi}}

to:

\def\@fnsymbol#1{\ensuremath{\ifcase#1\or \dagger\or \ddagger\or
   \mathsection\or \mathparagraph\or \|\or **\or \dagger\dagger
   \or \ddagger\ddagger \else\@ctrerr\fi}}

where I have simply deleted *\or from the sequence.

The above code can be applied as shown in the following MWE:

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,two column]{article}

    \makeatletter
\def\@fnsymbol#1{\ensuremath{\ifcase#1\or \dagger\or \ddagger\or
   \mathsection\or \mathparagraph\or \|\or **\or \dagger\dagger
   \or \ddagger\ddagger \else\@ctrerr\fi}}
    \makeatother


\begin{document}
\author{Nicolas\thanks{Ask a question}}
\title{Minimal Example}
\maketitle

\end{document}

For a more in depth discussion on how the \thanks command works, you can have a look at the Werner's excellent answer to 'How does \thanks work in LaTeX article class?'

Answer 2

A simpler approach than @leandriis' is to just set the counter appropriately (easier as long as you have just one note). So you pretend to have one footnote before and latex uses the second footnote symbol.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,two column]{article}
\usepackage[symbol]{footmisc}

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}

\begin{document}
\author{\stepcounter{footnote}Nicolas\thanks{Ask a question}}
\title{Minimal Example}
\maketitle
\end{document}