Footnotes in Markdown

Did you know - WordPress Markdown supports footnotes⁰? There is some documentation but I thought I'd write a slightly more comprehensive guide.

The code is pretty simple. Write [^1] where you want your first footnote link to appear. Then, later in the document, write [^1]: The text of the note.

It doesn't matter what number you put inside the [^…], WordPress automatically generates a sequential number when displaying the links. For example, this one is [^3]¹

In order to keep your thoughts straight while writing and editing, you can give your footnotes names - like [^fn about names]². If you want, you can also use emoji³. When you click that link, the emoji should appear in your URl bar.

Similarly, you can write the footnote text next to where you want the link to appear. Something like:

Something like[^5] 

[^5]: See!

should work fine⁴.

Sadly⁵, there's no such thing as a <footnote> element⁶ in HTML

WordPress automagically puts the footnotes at the end of your page in this structure:

 HTML<div class="footnotes">

   <hr>

   <ol>

      <li id="fn-1234-1"> ... <a href="#fnref-1234-1">↩</a></li>

...

This means you can style the div and hr⁷. The number after fn- is the WordPress post ID.

There are a few other things to be aware of⁸, but they're pretty easy to use. No plugins required, no expensive themes. Just cool in-built functionality.

Enjoy!⁹