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How to Add Endnotes

Endnotes work like footnotes, with one difference. Instead of sitting at the bottom of the page, the note text is gathered together elsewhere: either at the end of each chapter, or in one place at the back of your book. In your text the reader sees a small raised number, and can jump to the matching note and back again.

Endnotes work in both EPUB and print-ready PDF.

How to Create an Endnote

  1. Position your cursor where you want the note’s raised number to appear
  2. Open the notes dropdown in your editor toolbar and choose Endnote. You can also press Ctrl+Shift+M (Cmd+Shift+M on Mac) to start an endnote directly.
  3. Enter your note text in the window that appears
  4. Click Save to insert the endnote

A small raised number appears in your text. The note itself is collected with your other endnotes, as described in Where Your Endnotes Appear below.

Editing Endnotes

  1. Click on the endnote’s raised number in your text
  2. Modify the note text in the window that appears
  3. Click Save to update

Edit an Endnote From the Preview

Just like footnotes, you can jump to an endnote straight from the e-reader device previewers. Click the note’s number in the preview, then use the pencil icon in the popup to land back in the editor at that exact note. Endnotes behave the same way footnotes do here, covered in Edit a Footnote From the Preview.

Where Your Endnotes Appear

You have two ways to gather your endnotes. Use whichever suits your book: all of your notes together at the back, or grouped chapter by chapter.

Option 1: One list at the back of your book

Add an Endnotes section to your back matter (see Add New Sections). Every endnote in your book is collected there, in reading order, and grouped under headings. There is one heading for each book part and one for each chapter, so a reader can find the right note quickly.

Those grouping headings use your book’s subheading styles, so they match everything else. On the Endnotes section’s own settings you can choose:

  • Book part headings. Which subheading style and alignment to use for each book part’s heading.
  • Chapter headings. Which subheading style and alignment to use for each chapter’s heading.

You can place more than one Endnotes section if you want to split notes into separate groups, for example one per volume.

Option 2: A short list at the end of every chapter

Turn on Add Endnotes At End Of Section at the top of the Endnotes style panel. Each chapter’s notes then appear right after that chapter’s text, under their own heading.

The panel’s End of Section tab controls:

  • Heading title. The wording of the heading above each chapter’s notes (default: Notes).
  • Heading style. Which subheading style the heading uses.
  • Separator. What divides the notes from the chapter text above them: a decorative ornamental break (the default), or a page break that starts the notes on a fresh page.

Automatic Numbering

Lacuna numbers your endnotes for you and renumbers them whenever you add or remove one, so you never have to track the numbers by hand.

Using endnotes and footnotes together

If your book uses both kinds of note, Lacuna keeps them clearly apart so a reader never mixes them up:

  • Endnotes are numbered: 1, 2, 3, and so on.
  • Footnotes switch to the traditional footnote symbols: asterisk (*), dagger (†), double dagger (‡), section mark (§), and onward through the standard sequence.

This happens automatically the moment a chapter contains both an endnote and a footnote.

Styling Your Endnotes

Open the Endnotes style panel to control how your notes look. As with the rest of your book, your choices can be saved as presets and previewed live as you work (see Live Style Changes). The panel has these tabs:

  • Text. The font, size, and line spacing of your note text.
  • Spacing. The margins around the notes and the space between one note and the next.
  • Backlinks. The small return arrow (↩) that sends a reader from a note back to where they were reading. You can turn it off or change the symbol. (EPUB only. Print PDFs do not use backlinks.)
  • End of Section. The heading and separator settings described in Option 2. This tab only appears when Add Endnotes At End Of Section is turned on.