Footnote Formatter
Body text and notes
Formatted result
The first draft was finished in March¹. The second took longer², and the third³ is still open.
1. Field notes, 12 March. 2. Interview transcript, 4 April. 3. Working draft, unpublished.
Markers are matched to notes in order of first appearance, so a body numbered [1], [3] with two notes is renumbered 1, 2 and the mismatch is reported above rather than silently hidden.
Match inline markers to a list of notes, renumber both consistently, convert between bracket, caret, parenthesis, superscript and Markdown forms, and export the result as Markdown, HTML or plain text.
What is Footnote Formatter?
Notes accumulate messily. A draft uses square brackets in one chapter and superscripts in another, a note is added without a marker, a marker is left behind after its note was cut, and the numbering stops matching somewhere in the middle. The Footnote Formatter reads the body text and the note list together, matches markers to notes in order of first appearance, renumbers both so they agree, and reports every mismatch it found instead of quietly fixing it.
Detection is automatic by default. The tool identifies which marker style the body uses — square brackets, carets, parentheses or symbol marks such as an asterisk or dagger — and shows which one it found in the style menu, so you can confirm it before trusting the result. If a document mixes styles, or you are converting deliberately, you can select the style by hand and the analysis follows your choice.
Footnote numbering is separate from marker style, which is what makes the tool useful for formats that care. The numeric style gives 1, 2, 3. The alpha style gives a, b, c and continues past z to aa, the way a spreadsheet column does. The roman style gives lowercase i, ii, iii. The symbol style walks the traditional sequence of asterisk, dagger and double dagger. Body markers and the note list are rendered in the same scheme, so a document numbered in roman numerals does not end up with arabic numbers in its notes.
Markers in the body can be reformatted independently of the notes list. Superscript output is the usual choice for prose, square brackets suit plain-text files and Markdown, the caret form matches a common plain-text convention, and the Markdown form uses the footnote syntax an editor will convert. The list itself can be Markdown, an HTML ordered list with anchor links back to each reference, or plain text for a file that will be pasted into a form or an email.
The result panel reports markers found, notes matched and notes provided, which is where discrepancies surface. Markers without notes, notes without markers and duplicate references are all listed as warnings with enough context to find them, and because renumbering follows first appearance, a body that jumps from one to three with two notes comes out as one and two with the mismatch reported. The combined output — renumbered body plus formatted notes — is one click away from the clipboard or a download, with the file extension and MIME type matching the format you chose.
Everything runs on the text you paste. No document is uploaded, nothing is stored, and the formatting is a deterministic transformation of your input rather than a guess about your style guide.
Consistency is the reason to format footnotes with a tool rather than by hand. A long document is usually written in pieces, and every piece arrives with its own habit: superscript markers here, square brackets there, a note added mid-sentence with no number at all. One pass through this tool makes the numbering agree, converts the markers into the form your publisher or house style expects, and lists every discrepancy it found. The warnings are the part to read closely, because a marker without a matching note is exactly the kind of error that survives all the way to proof stage.
How to use Footnote Formatter
- Paste the body text with its inline markers into the first box.
- Paste the notes into the second box, one per line.
- Confirm the detected marker style, or choose one yourself if the document mixes styles.
- Pick the numbering scheme, the marker format for the body and the format for the note list.
- Read the warnings, then copy or download the renumbered body with its formatted notes.
When to use Footnote Formatter vs related tools
Use it whenever a document carries notes that have been edited in pieces: a thesis chapter, a magazine feature, a report with sources, or a manuscript being converted between tools. The Word Count Tool is the companion check when a submission limit excludes or includes the notes, since it can count the body and the note list separately.
For a document whose numbering has drifted alongside its dates and figures, the Number Format Checker reports inconsistent separators in the prose while this tool keeps the notes themselves in order.
Privacy & Security
This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.