Footnote error on my word document

[Ashley]

I am currently in the middle of my dissertation. On attempting to reference
for 8th time- the first 7 worked successfully- the number that appears at the
bottom of the page appeared but beside the text that I am referencing the 8
didn't appear. Instead a small horizontal dash appeared to the top right
where the number ought to have appeared. I experimented by adding extra
footnotes afterwards but with 9, 10, 11 and so on, the numbers appeared in
the box/bottom of the page and not beside the main text.

This is frustrating because I am running out of time with my dissertation
and need to feel confident that I can carry on without any problem. Any help
would be very gratefully received. I have tried copying and pasting into a
fresh word document, and also restarting my computer, but to no avail. The
Help function also doesn't seem to hold the answer.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Do you have line spacing set to an Exact amount that might truncate
superscript numerals?

 

[Ashley]

Thanks for your speedy response.

I am unsure of whether the line spacing is set to an exact amount but for
some reason after a lot of frustration I decided to experiment with placing
the 8th footnote in the paragraph above, just at the end of the paragraph, to
test it. The 8 appeared this time and yet, on trying to place the footnote in
the original, desired place it failed yet again and the horizontal dash
appeared once more. I copied and pasted the number 8 from the paragraph above
to the desired place and on doing so a 9 appeared in its place. I deleted the
9, and the 8 from the paragraph above (the one I had copied and pasted) and
tried again footnoting where I had originally intended. This time it worked.
Somehow by copying and pasting I fixed the problem.

I still don't know why it occurred in the first place. I apologise if my
long-winded explanation is a bit messy and hard to understand. Any more
information about why this could possibly have occurred would be very
gratefully received.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Without seeing the document, I couldn't begin to guess what's happening.