A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text.
Footnotes are notes at the foot of the page while endnotes are collected under a separate heading at the end of a chapter, volume, or entire work. Unlike footnotes, endnotes have the advantage of not affecting the layout of the main text, but may cause inconvenience to readers who have to move back and forth between the main text and the endnotes.
In some editions of the Bible, notes are placed in a narrow column in the middle of each page between two columns of biblical text.
In English, a footnote or endnote is normally flagged by a superscripted number immediately following that portion of the text the note references, each such footnote being numbered sequentially. Occasionally, a number between brackets or parentheses is used instead, thus: [1], which can also be superscripted.
Typographical devices such as the asterisk (*) or dagger (†) may also be used to point to notes; the traditional order of these symbols in English is *, †, ‡, §, ‖, ¶.[1] Other symbols, including the #, Δ, ◊, ↓, and ☞, have also been used.[2][3] In documents like timetables, many different symbols, letters, and numbers may refer the reader to particular notes.
In CJK languages, written with Chinese characters, the symbol ※ (called reference mark; Japanese: komejirushi; Korean: chamgopyo) is used for notes and highlighting, analogously to the asterisk in English.