Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) (Tools and Techniques

116 Chapter 4. Displayed Text
\footnotetext outside the environment. However, if the tabular environment
is inside a minipage, normal \footnote commands may also be used inside the
table. The footnote appears below the table where the minipage comes to an end.
Exercise 4.17: Produce a number of footnotes in your standard exercise file by
inserting them where you think fit and by selecting some appropriate footnote
text.
Exercise 4.18: Redefine the command \thefootnote so that the footnote markers
become the symbols illustrated in Section 4.10.2. Add the redefinition to the
preamble of your standard exercise file.
Exercise 4.19: Complete Exercise 4.15 so that the footnotes a and b appear as in
the table on page 109.
4.10.5 Marginal notes
This
is a
marginal
note
=⇒
Notes in the page margin are produced with the command
\marginpar{note text}
which puts the text note text into the margin beginning at the level of the
line where the command is given. The marginal note appearing here was
generated with
... The marginal note \marginpar{This\\ is a\\ margin-\\al note}
appearing here ...
The text is normally enclosed in a parbox of width 1.9 cm (0.75 in).
Such a narrow box causes great difficulties with line breaking, which is
why the lines are manually broken with the \\ command in the above
example. Such a box is far more appropriate for marginal notes in the
form of a single symbol, such as the arrow shown here.
Another common use for the marginal note is to draw attention to
certain text passages by marking them with a vertical bar in the margin.
This is often done to indicate changes in a text, for comparison with
earlier versions after updated single sheets have been redistributed. The
example marking this paragraph was made by including
\marginpar{\rule[-17.5mm]{1mm}{20mm}}
in the first line.
The width of the marginal note can be changed with a style parameter
described in the next section. The user must watch out that the total page
width does not become too big for the printer.
By default, marginal notes appear in the right-hand margin of the page,
or in the outer margin when the twoside option has been selected. ‘Outer’
means the right margin for odd pages, and left for even ones. With the
twocolumn option, they are placed in the outside margins: left for the left
column and right for the right one.