dealing with large amount of footnotes

[Taha]

Hi, I am typing a book which has MANY single word footnotes. For example on
in the first two paragharaphs it has 27 one or two word footnotes. These
appear as a long list. Is there any way I can divide the footnote area into 3
columns so that the footnotes will take less space and my page will look more
presentable! Writing in the footnotes manually would not be an option since
the document is 500 pages and editing would be a nightmare. So please help if
you can. Many thanks.

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Yes and no. In your example with 27 footnotes, it is possible to
create, say, 3 columns of 9 footnotes each. But Word will still
reserve 27 lines of space at the bottom of the page for the 27
footnotes, so you will end up with an 18-line blank area at the
bottom of the page below the 3 columns of footnotes.

 

[Taha]

Would you please explain how to create the 3 columns in the footnote section.
(In Normal View in the Footnote pane the option for creating columns is not
accessible.)

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Seems to me that if the footnotes are only one or two words, then
you would be doing your readers a big favor by not bothering with
footnotes at all, and just entering the one or two words in the
text where you currently have a footnote reference. Why would
you want to force your readers to refer to the bottom of the page
27 times in the first two paragraphs???

You can't put the footnotes into three columns by clicking on
Format | Columns. Instead, you would select the footnotes, set
left-aligned tab stops where you want the second and third
columns to begin, replace all of the paragraph marks at the end
of the footnotes with a tab character and a paragraph mark, and
then hide the paragraph marks at the end of the 1st, 2nd, 4th,
5th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, etc. footnotes.

If you truly want to make your document look more presentable,
then stop using words like 'paragharaphs' and phrases like 'on
in' in your document.