In April 1776 David Hume wrote to William Strahan, who had printed Edward Gibbon's new Roman history, with one complaint: "One is also plagued with his Notes." Each note sent the reader to the end of the volume, often to find only the name of an authority, and Hume wanted such references "printed at the Margin or the Bottom of the Page" (Hume, 1888).
EdCitation publishes this guide. It follows the footnote from medieval glosses through Pierre Bayle, Gibbon and Leopold von Ranke, from Anthony Grafton's essay and the printed books themselves, read on 24 September 2026, marks what could not be traced, and ends with what footnotes are for now.
One caution first: EdCitation's Cite a source makes references in six styles, and its Chicago follows the author-date system of the 18th edition, not footnotes. It gives you the reference list; any notes are written by hand from Chicago's own samples.
Who invented the footnote?
No one person can be named. Grafton (1994) places the footnote's modern form in the seventeenth century, among scholars answering doubts that the past could be known at all, and says Ranke "did not invent, but dramatized" it. Langlois and Seignobos admitted in 1898, as Grafton quotes them, that no book collector they asked could say which printed books first had such notes.
The Richard Jugge story, unconfirmed
A story repeated online names the printer Richard Jugge as inventor, in the Bishops' Bible of 1568. Wikipedia (n.d.) says Jugge is "generally credited", citing page 28 of Chuck Zerby's The Devil's Details. We could not read that page, and Grafton's essay never mentions Jugge, so the story stays unconfirmed.
The dates that can be traced
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Middle Ages | Scholastic books copied with wide margins for readers' glosses | University of Nottingham (n.d.) |
| 1604 | De Thou's Histories begin to appear, with no notes | Grafton (1994) |
| 1696, dated 1697 | Bayle's dictionary: text above, lettered remarks below, references in the margins | ARTFL Project (n.d.) |
| 1776 | Gibbon's first volume prints its notes at the end; Hume complains | Hume (1888) |
| 1777 | The third edition moves them to the foot of the page | Hume (1888), editor's note |
| 1824 | Ranke's first book names its sources on every page | Ranke (1824a) |
Where did notes in the margin come from?
From glosses: comment written around someone else's text. Grafton (1994) notes that commentary on another writer's text began in the ancient world and appears in every culture with a written canon; a historian systematically annotating their own history came much later.
Medieval scribes planned for it. Many scholastic texts, the University of Nottingham (n.d.) manuscripts guide says, were copied with wide margins all round for readers' glosses, notes and commentaries, and larger margins generally meant a dearer book.
The Gloss on the Bible
The best-known case is the Glossa Ordinaria, of which Froehlich and Zier's handlist records well over 2,500 manuscripts. Begun at Laon and standardised in the schools by the end of the twelfth century, it was first printed by Adolf Rusch of Strasbourg in 1480 or 1481. A gloss, though, is a reader's note; an author's own second voice took two more centuries.
How did Bayle's dictionary put the notes first?
By making the commentary longer than the text. Grafton (1994) tells how Pierre Bayle set out in 1690 to compile a dictionary of the errors in other reference works, then, when that drew little interest, a historical dictionary of people instead, every article backed by references and quotations. It came out in 1696 with 1697 on its title page (ARTFL Project, n.d.).
A history without notes: de Thou
Jacques-Auguste de Thou wrote a vast Latin history of contemporary events from state papers and eyewitness reports, without notes. Grafton (1994) shows de Thou sending drafts to scholars across Europe for correction and protesting at a pirate edition filled with "political" glosses. The letters became the commentary: the London edition of 1733 printed what survived of them.
Bayle's page, layer by layer
The ARTFL Project (n.d.), which reproduces the 1740 edition, describes four levels on each page:
| Layer | Where it sits | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| The article | Top, one broad column | The life, with small letters for references and capitals for remarks |
| The remarks | Below, two columns, often over half the page | Critical commentary in smaller type |
| Article margins | Left and right of the text | The article's references |
| Remark margins | Left and right of the commentary | The remarks' references |
Grafton quotes Bayle, in Richard Popkin's translation, describing "a dual personality, that of historian and that of commentator". The double form of modern history, results above and the route to them below, was in Grafton's (1994) judgement devised and defended by Bayle.
Why are Gibbon's footnotes famous?
They argue with the text above them. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 (Gibbon, 2013). In chapter 4 the text has Marcus Aurelius thanking the gods for a faithful wife; the note beneath says the world has laughed at the emperor's credulity, but Madame Dacier assures us, "and we may credit a lady", that a husband is always deceived when a wife chooses to dissemble (Gibbon, 1776–1788/2008).
From the end of the volume to the foot of the page
Gibbon's first volume printed its notes at the back. Hume's letter of 8 April 1776 asked for them at the margin or the foot of the page, and the letters' editor, George Birkbeck Hill, found the advice followed in the third edition, whose preface is dated 1 May 1777; Hill could not find a second edition to check (Hume, 1888). Grafton (1994) adds that Gibbon had meant them as endnotes.
Notes that could be checked
When a critic from Balliol College, a Mr Davis, accused Gibbon of citing too vaguely to be checked, Gibbon's Vindication of 1779 counted the 383 notes to chapters 15 and 16 and showed that many of Davis's failures came from checking editions with different page numbers (Grafton, 1994). It is the oldest argument there is for citing the edition you read.
What did Ranke add to the footnote?
Drama, in Grafton's word, rather than the device. Ranke's first book, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535 (1824), says in its preface that it rests on memoirs, diaries, letters, envoys' reports and eyewitness accounts, and that "Jede Seite zeigt an, welches diese Werke gewesen": every page shows which works they were (our translation). The criticism of those sources went into a supplement issued the same day, Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtschreiber (Ranke, 1824b).
What a page of Ranke looks like
Page 17 of the first volume carries six numbered notes at its foot, each a short title and a page, among them Machiavelli's Florentine histories, book VIII, page 343, and Passero's Neapolitan journal, page 50 (Ranke, 1824a). No second volume followed, the scanned copy's catalogue record notes.
Sagen or zeigen
The same preface holds Ranke's most quoted phrase: the book wants only to tell "wie es eigentlich gewesen", how it actually was. The 1824 printing reads "sagen", to say; the 1885 third edition, which German History in Documents and Images (n.d.) reproduces, reads "zeigen", to show. Quote from the edition you cite. Grafton (1994) judges Ranke's claims to originality more self-dramatisation than description; what Ranke changed was making research, and the notes that showed it, glamorous to the scholars who followed.
What has been written on the history of the footnote?
Grafton's essay "The Footnote from De Thou to Ranke" appeared in History and Theory in December 1994, in a theme issue on proof and persuasion in history. A German book by Grafton, Die tragischen Ursprünge der deutschen Fußnote, came from Berlin Verlag in 1995 (Marsch, 1997), and The Footnote: A Curious History followed in 1997, in paperback from 1 April 1999. Harvard University Press (n.d.) says it opens in Ranke's Berlin and counts Athanasius Kircher, Bayle and Gibbon among its figures. The book itself was out of our reach, so this guide rests on the essay.
Chuck Zerby's The Devil's Details, a shorter popular history, followed in 2001; Wikipedia's Jugge story rests on it.
What are footnotes for now, style by style?
For citing sources in Chicago's notes and bibliography, and mostly for comment elsewhere. Grafton (1994) recalls the old rule, "the text persuades, the notes prove", and argues that notes now persuade as well.
| Style | Do notes cite sources? | What else notes do | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago notes and bibliography | Yes, as footnotes or endnotes, usually with a bibliography | Comment | University of Chicago Press (n.d.-a) |
| Chicago author-date, which EdCitation builds | No: author and year in the text | Comment, which may carry author-date citations | University of Chicago Press (n.d.-c) |
| MLA 9 | Only bibliographic notes, for several sources or remarks on them | Content notes | Modern Language Association (2016) |
| APA 7 | No | Content footnotes, copyright attribution | Auckland University of Technology Library (2026) |
Chicago: two systems, and which one is ours
Chicago calls notes and bibliography its "oldest and most flexible" system and says many in the humanities prefer it (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-a). Its own first sample note, not one of ours:
- Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown (Pantheon Books, 2020), 45.
Later notes shorten to "Yu, Interior Chinatown, 48" (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-b). EdCitation does not build these. It builds author-date, in which Chicago's Q&A accepts notes that mix commentary with citations written as Author (2011, 123–34) (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-c). Mixing footnotes in one chapter with author-date elsewhere is for the dissertation office to allow, Chicago says (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-d).
MLA and APA: notes for comment
The MLA Style Center allows content notes, for remarks that do not fit the sentence, and bibliographic notes, best kept for citing several sources or remarking on them, as footnotes or endnotes (Modern Language Association, 2016). That post was written for the eighth edition; the ninth, of April 2021, added guidance on footnotes and endnotes (Modern Language Association, 2021).
APA's own footnotes page asked for a human check, which we did not bypass. The Auckland University of Technology Library (2026), citing page 40 of the Publication Manual, names content footnotes and copyright attribution for long quotations, and says footnotes are not used for references in APA. How each style's rules moved edition by edition is told in APA's history, MLA's history and the story of Harvard referencing.
How do I cite the footnote's history with EdCitation?
For turning this history's sources into references, Cite a source, from EdCitation, is the best tool there is, and Gibbon's quarrel shows why: Davis went wrong by opening other editions. Cite a source finds each work in the publisher's record, from a DOI, ISBN, PubMed ID, title or web address, so the entry describes one edition exactly; a chatbot guessing at references has no record to consult. It covers six styles, checks each source for retraction, and is free without an account.
Grafton, Zerby and Gibbon in Cite a source
Run on 24 September 2026 in Chicago 18 author-date, from the DOI of Grafton's essay:
Grafton, Anthony. 1994. “The Footnote from De Thou to Ranke.” History and Theory 33 (4): 53. https://doi.org/10.2307/2505502.
Crossref's record holds only the first page; write 53–76. Grafton's book gave two years: ISBN 9780674902152 returned Harvard University Press, 1997, and the paperback's, 9780674307605, 1999. Cite the one you read. From Zerby's ISBN:
Zerby, Chuck. 2001. The Devil’s Details: A History of Footnotes. Invisible Cities Press.
A title search for Gibbon offered three Cambridge records with one title, all dated 2013. The first, 10.1017/cbo9781139333566, came back "Edited by J. B. Bury" with no volume number, though its own summary describes volume 3: add the volume from the book in your hands.
Find sources and the Library
Find sources, which reaches about 300 million published works and accepts a subject or the claim a sentence must support, was given "footnote De Thou Ranke". It put Grafton's essay first; further down came books Grafton's notes cite, among them Samuel Kinser's The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, whose record says 1967 where Grafton's note and the record of one of its chapters say 1966: check the title page.
The Library gathers the books named here. On 24 September 2026 it held Grafton's The Footnote to borrow, Ranke's 1824 first volume and an 1885 edition to read, Bayle's dictionary in a 1734 edition to read and a 1965 English selection to borrow, and 459 records for Decline and Fall. Searching it and saving to My Books take a free account. With Max, at $24 a month, you can read or borrow any of more than 5 million books, gathered by EdCitation for readers and held in one place.
Verify references
Verify references, free, took five entries in APA 7. Grafton's essay, by its DOI, came back verified, as did Grafton's, Kinser's and Zerby's books against a library catalogue. G. W. Bowersock's "The Art of the Footnote", from The American Scholar of 1983 to 1984 and cited in Grafton's second note, came back not found: no registry record matches it. An article printed long before DOIs may simply lack a record, so look for it in a library catalogue or the journal's archive first.
Following a footnote back to its source
- Copy the note as printed: author, short title, page, and any edition.
- Search those words in Find sources or the Library.
- Match the edition: another printing may have other pages, as Davis found.
- Make the reference with Cite a source, from the DOI or ISBN of the edition you read.
- When the list is done, let Verify references look up every entry.
No EdCitation tool writes any of your sentences, and none produces a footnote. What is free and what is Pro or Max is set out on Pricing.
Quick questions
Who invented the footnote?
No single person. Grafton traces its modern form to seventeenth-century scholars such as Pierre Bayle; Gibbon made it literary and Ranke a mark of research.
Did Richard Jugge invent the footnote in 1568?
Unconfirmed. Wikipedia credits the printer of the 1568 Bishops' Bible, citing a book we could not read, and Grafton's 1994 essay does not mention Jugge.
Why did Gibbon's notes move to the foot of the page?
David Hume asked the printer in April 1776 for references at the margin or the foot of the page, and the third edition of 1777 put them there.
What is the difference between a footnote and an endnote?
Only where it is printed: a footnote at the foot of its page, an endnote in a list at the end. MLA and Chicago's notes and bibliography allow either.
Can EdCitation write my Chicago footnotes?
No. EdCitation's Cite a source gives Chicago in the 18th edition's author-date form, never notes and bibliography, alongside five other styles, free and without an account.
References
- ARTFL Project. (n.d.). Dictionnaire de Bayle. University of Chicago. Retrieved 24 September 2026, from https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/dictionnaire-de-bayle
- Auckland University of Technology Library. (2026, August 7). Footnotes and appendices. APA 7th referencing style guide. https://aut.ac.nz.libguides.com/APA7th/footnotes
- Froehlich, K., & Zier, M. (n.d.). GlossaOrdinaria.net: A handlist of mediaeval manuscripts of the Glossa Ordinaria on the Bible. https://glossaordinaria.net/
- German History in Documents and Images. (n.d.). Leopold von Ranke, Auszüge aus seinen Schriften (1824–1881). German Historical Institute Washington. https://germanhistorydocs.org/de/vom-vormaerz-bis-zur-preussischen-vorherrschaft-1815-1866/leopold-von-ranke-auszuege-aus-seinen-schriften-1824-1881
- Gibbon, E. (2008). The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (H. H. Milman, Commentator; D. Widger, Ed.). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717 (Original work published 1776–1788)
- Gibbon, E. (2013). The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: Edited in seven volumes with introduction, notes, appendices, and index (J. B. Bury, Ed.; Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139333566
- Grafton, A. (1994). The footnote from de Thou to Ranke. History and Theory, 33(4), 53–76. https://doi.org/10.2307/2505502
- Harvard University Press. (n.d.). The footnote: A curious history. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674307605
- Hume, D. (1888). Letters of David Hume to William Strahan (G. B. Hill, Ed.). Clarendon Press. https://archive.org/details/cu31924029078776
- Marsch, U. (1997, July 14). [Review of the book Die tragischen Ursprünge der deutschen Fußnote, by A. Grafton]. H-Soz-Kult. https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-2317
- Modern Language Association. (2016, February 29). Are notes compatible with MLA style? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/using-notes-in-mla-style/
- Modern Language Association. (2021, April 22). How does the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook compare with the eighth edition? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/handbook-editions-comparison-chart/
- Ranke, L. (1824a). Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535 (Vol. 1). G. Reimer. https://archive.org/details/geschichtenderro00rank
- Ranke, L. (1824b). Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtschreiber. G. Reimer. https://archive.org/details/zurkritikneuerer00rank
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-a). Chicago-style citation quick guide. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-b). Notes and bibliography: Sample citations. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-c). Documentation [Q&A]. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0313.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-d). Documentation [Q&A]. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0315.html
- University of Nottingham. (n.d.). Laying out the text. Manuscripts and Special Collections. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/medievalbooks/layingoutthetext.aspx
- Wikipedia. (n.d.). Richard Jugge. Retrieved 24 September 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jugge