Is this the right way to format foot notes?

Question

Using the command

\newcommand\@makefntext[1]{%
\noindent\makebox[.02\columnwidth][l]{\@thefnmark}%
\parbox[t]{.98\columnwidth}{#1}}

I got the desired result for the foot notes, as shown in the image below.

I'd like to know if my code is the best way to do this.

edited: using footmisc with the option hang as suggested, the format of the foot number is different so the vertical space around the foot note is changed.

Answer 1

With scrextend, a package that is part of the KOMA-Script bundle, one can use KOMA's command

\deffootnote[<mark width>]{<indent>}{<parindent>}{<definition>}

with the standard classes for formatting footnotes. The following figure (taken from the KOMA-Script documentation) illustrates the different values:

Inside the <definition> one can refer to the footnote mark with \thefootnotemark. Footnotes defined this way also work with hyperref.

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{scrextend}
\deffootnote[1.5em]{1.5em}{1em}{\thefootnotemark.\space}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text

\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\mainmatter

% we want to see what happens for two digit footnote numbers
\setcounter{footnote}{8} 

a\footnote{\lipsum*[2]}b\footnote{\lipsum[2]\lipsum*[3]}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can customize the appearance of the footnotes with the footmisc package. Here's an example:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[hang]{footmisc}

% do this \AtBeginDocument so that all font settings will be already made
\AtBeginDocument{
 % set the \footnotemargin to 1.5em at \footnotesize
 \footnotesize\setlength{\footnotemargin}{1.5em}\normalsize
 % set the footnote parindent equal to the normal parindent
 \edef\hangfootparindent{\the\parindent}
 % no parskip in foonotes
 \renewcommand{\hangfootparskip}{0pt}
}

\usepackage{lipsum} % mock text
\begin{document}
\mainmatter

% we want to see what happens for two digit footnote numbers
\setcounter{footnote}{8} 

a\footnote{\lipsum*[2]}b\footnote{\lipsum[2]\lipsum*[3]}

\end{document}

You can set differently the parameters; just remember that \hangfootparindent and \hangfootparskip are macros, rather than lengths.

The \edef trick is used to store the current value of \parindent.

Note The hyperlinks of hyperref don't work with footmisc, so one has to say

\hypersetup{hyperfootnotes=false}

if hyperref is loaded.

With your attempt, you lose the possibility of breaking a footnote across pages, which is undesirable in general, but sometimes is the only option, particularly for long footnotes.

---

A way to get footnote marks in the footnote not to be superscripted is the following:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\sigur@makefnmark}{\@thefnmark}
\pretocmd{\@makefntext}{\let\@makefnmark\sigur@makefnmark}{}{}
\makeatother

We patch the \@makefntext so that a different macro is used for typesetting the footnote number. This won't work if you have footnotes to footnotes, of course. It's safe to change the meaning of \@makefnmark because \@makefntext is expanded in a group, so this change will not affect the typesetting of footnote marks in the text.