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The norm say: When there are punctuation marks (e.g. a comma, colon or period) at the point where the footnote indicator should be inserted, the indicator is placed after the punctuation in English but before the punctuation in French and Spanish.

But, consider the following code:

\documentclass{article}

\newsavebox\superscriptbox
\newsavebox\commabox

\sbox{\superscriptbox}{\textsuperscript{12}}
\sbox{\commabox}{,}

\begin{document}

    The English norm: Hello,\textsuperscript{12} bye \newline

    The Spanish and French norm: Hello\textsuperscript{12}, bye \newline

    The \TeX\ power: Hello,\kern-\wd\commabox\textsuperscript{12} bye. %
    Hello\textsuperscript{12}\kern-\wd\superscriptbox,\kern\wd\superscriptbox bye

\end{document}

Output:

enter image description here

The last line of the output, is more or less beautiful than the norm?

Edit: How can I modify the footnote command for implement the "overlapped" version (only for comma and dot), but automatically?

Mensch
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David
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    i suppose it depends on what one is used to. i find the spanish/french form disconcerting -- and wonder if even more space is added before the comma in french? i do like the "overlapped" version, but don't think it would work if the punctuation were a colon or semicolon, unless the index were raised. that leaves a question -- what to do if the punctuation is a question mark or exclamation point? in other words, this opens a can of worms. – barbara beeton Oct 08 '13 at 14:19
  • To me, the last line looks cramped. I think beauty is (largely) in the eye of the beholder in most cases, and definitely so here. You may want to look at this question also. – jon Oct 08 '13 at 14:20
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    Please, where does this norm comes from? The only norm I know is that a footnote is placed behind an word, if the footnote explains the word and after . or ! or ? if it explains the complete sentence. Found in several typographic rules books ... – Mensch Oct 08 '13 at 14:30
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    Have you seen Is there a way to automatically change kerning between commas/full stops and footnote marks? – cgnieder Oct 08 '13 at 14:40
  • Note that this is not even just a language thing: Nature uses 'sentence' logic for superscripts, for example. – Joseph Wright Oct 08 '13 at 17:21
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    The question »The last line of the output, is more or less beautiful than the norm?« is of course highly subjective and I doubt it can be answered in our Q&A form. As for »How can I modify the footnote command...«. this is already answered in the question I linked to. – cgnieder Oct 08 '13 at 18:07
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    Related: http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/a/3426/21891 – jub0bs Oct 08 '13 at 18:39

2 Answers2

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Just stick to the norm that applies.

It is irrelevant if one prefers one way more than the other. Provided that one knows the norm of the language in which the text is to be written, one must just follow it.

jasikevicius23
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From what I've seen, and most of my time is spent reading papers, footnote indicators and quotation marks tend to be placed after commas, full stops, question/exclamation marks, etc. I find it rather pleasing; the white space between a word and punctuation in the Spanish/French norm is rather disconcerting.

I would say that the "English Norm" looks aesthetically better than the "Tex power."

Pedro Tiago Martins
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  • What, exactly, is the "Tex power"? – cgnieder Oct 29 '13 at 12:06
  • I took it to be TeX's way of typesetting superscript text with the code provided, which will result in something that looks very much like a footnote marker or an exponent (power), but is typeset differently, as can be seen in David's example. – Pedro Tiago Martins Nov 15 '13 at 14:16
  • But isn't the “TeX power” to write packages and macros in order to obtain the output you want? TeX itself doesn't even have a \footnote command: it is build using the math superscripts. – cgnieder Nov 15 '13 at 14:23
  • Not knowing what else it could refer to, I just used the term to refer to the example provided. My opinion was based only on aesthetics, and not at all on the underlying code or method. – Pedro Tiago Martins Nov 15 '13 at 14:29
  • So by “TeX power” you refer to LaTeX's default footnote mark layout? (TeX power implies that you mean some intrinsic property of TeX that also would apply to plain TeX, conTeXt...) – cgnieder Nov 15 '13 at 14:36
  • By "TeX Power" I don't refer to anything usually. Here, by "Tex Power" I referred to the only thing I took it to refer to (the specific example), the same way that "English norm" and "Spanish and French norm" referred to the corresponding examples. I guess I should've just written "the 3rd example" instead. (NB: In case there is any confusion, I am not the author of the question; that would be David) – Pedro Tiago Martins Nov 15 '13 at 14:46