Symbols instead of numbers as footnote markers

Question

How can I make LaTeX use symbols (*, †, ‡, and so on) instead of numbers to mark footnotes? (The numbers are confusing because I use superscripted numbers for citations.)

Answer 1

Use the footmisc package, with option symbol.

here is small example:

\usepackage[symbol]{footmisc}

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}
\footnote[num]{text}

instead of num you can put the number of the symbol you like:

1   asterisk        *   2   dagger      †   3   double dagger       ‡
4   section symbol  §   5   paragraph   ¶   6   parallel lines      ‖
7   two asterisks   **  8   two daggers ††  9   two double daggers  ‡‡

Answer 2

This can be done by redefining the output of the footnote counter:

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

If you would like to switch back to Arabic numbering, you can do it by

\renewcommand*{\thefootnote}{\arabic{footnote}}

especially if limiting by grouping (curly braces) would cover a too wide scope.

It may be desirable to reset the counter after such a change, such as by

\setcounter{footnote}{0}

Answer 3

You may also want to reset the footnote counter for each page. People are not familiar with the symbols beyond the double dagger, and more than (at most) 16 footnotes in a single chapter will result in an error message. To reset the counter per page, either use the footmisc option perpage or the following code:

\usepackage{perpage}
\MakePerPage{footnote}

Answer 4

Here is some code I used a long time ago:

\@addtoreset{footnote}{page}
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\ifcase\value{footnote}\or(*)\or
(**)\or(***)\or(****)\or(\#)\or(\#\#)\or(\#\#\#)\or(\#\#\#\#)\or($\infty$)\fi}

The first line should be between \makeatletter and \makeatother.

Answer 5

To get a huge number of footnote(-symbols) you could use the alphalph package.

Answer 6

You can use fontawesome package and instead of numbers use icons it provides like this:

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\color{white}{\faGears}}

or like this for minipage, mdframed etc...

\renewcommand{\thempfootnote}{\color{white}{\faGears}}

In the code above \faGears is an icon name. You can find more icons in the CTAN documentation.