Styling notes

Controlling the scope of styling

At the top of the Notes panel, specify how extensively the panel's settings will affect notes of the selected type:

Document-wide—settings affect all notes of the selected type in your document.
Custom—settings affect only notes of the selected type and encompassed by your selection or at the insertion point's position. They are also applied when you insert a note.

Custom styling

The Custom option allows a subset of notes to deviate from a document's default settings wherever needed. For example, you might use a different number format for a specific story, or apply a different rule colour, character style, or paragraph style that does not clash with a specific page's background.

Text selection/insertion point	Scope (selected note type only)
A text frame is selected	All references currently within the frame and their note bodies. (Notes in unselected linked frames are not affected.)
All of a story's text is selected	All the story's references, and the corresponding note bodies. (Notes in other stories are not affected.)
Some of a story's text is selected	Only references encompassed by the selection, and the corresponding note bodies.
Insertion point is at a reference in story text	Only the individual reference and its corresponding note body.
Selection or insertion point is within a note body	Only that note body and its corresponding reference (prefixed and in the story text).

Styling references and note bodies

The availability of Notes panel sections depends primarily on the type of note that is selected at the top of the panel. Some sections are available only when you select certain secondary settings on the panel, as described in the following table’s Available for column.

Section	Available for…	Purpose
Numbering	Footnotes, sidenotes and endnotes	Note serialisation settings, including characters used for references.
Format	Footnotes, sidenotes and endnotes	Advanced reference formatting, and character and paragraph styles for references and note bodies.
Positioning	Footnotes, sidenotes, and endnotes at End of Story	Distances of note bodies from story text and each other.
Rules	Footnotes, and endnotes at End of Story	Style settings for lines that separate note bodies from story text.
Title	Endnotes in Separate Frame, Shared Section Frame, Shared Document Frame or End of Book	Words and paragraph style for the heading that precedes endnote bodies.

To style references:

On the Notes panel, select the type and scope of notes you want to style.
In story text, position the insertion point/make a selection that encompasses references of the selected note type.
On the panel's Format section, next to In main text and/or In note body, set Number text, Number style, and Superscript as required.

To style note bodies:

On the Notes panel, select the type and scope of notes to be styled.
Position the insertion point within a note body of the selected note type.
On the panel's Format section, set Note body style to your required paragraph style.

Visually separating footnote bodies and story text

The Notes panel's Rules section allows you to clearly distinguish footnote bodies from the preceding story text by drawing a separating line between them.

Use Rule before to choose which of two scenarios the section's other settings will affect:

First Note—rules drawn above groups of note bodies where the first line is a new note.
Continued Note—rules drawn above groups of note bodies where the first line is a continuation of a note body from an earlier page. (A note's reference is not repeated where it continues.)

For each scenario, you can specify whether a rule should be drawn at all, and how it should be styled, sized, and positioned.

Endnote bodies

When endnote bodies are positioned in a separate text frame after their story text, section, document or book, each is enclosed in zero-width, non-printing note marks (brackets).

The marks are visible by default. To change their visibility, select Text>Notes>Show Note Marks.