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

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}
\title{Minimal Example}
\maketitle

\end{document}


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}
\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?'

• It works perfectly well, I do thank you ! Thanks also for the link to Werner's answer, it indeed helps to better understand the command. – Nicolas Oct 14 '18 at 13:44
• Note that, in some cultures, a dagger placed immediately after a person’s name indicates that the person is deceased. – user69308 Oct 14 '18 at 18:27

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}