: Two footnote numbering sequences Inspired by this question, a more complex question: how can I have two simultaneous sequences of footnotes? For example, suppose I am translating a book. The book

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A friend of mine with little to no technical background wrote a book in LaTeX with five(!) sequences of notes.

LaTeX is free but it is quite different from Word. Basically you type a plain text file with some semantical markup and the software turns it into a beautifully typeset pdf file.

It would require some effort to learn but it is pretty good and there are plenty of resources, including a site here on stackexchange. This question is about your exact problem but I'm afraid it will be hard to understand until you've had a look at the basics of the system.

As for where to get those basics, I will not reccommend a particular guide here. It's been a long time since I learned it and I came from a different background. I can attest that today a search for LaTeX guides online will yield plenty of results with different approaches.

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1) This kind of formatting may be something which would have to be done manually by the end typesetter/layout person before publication. You would run everything in numerical sequence regardless of the kind of note. Indicate in the body of the footnote which was which (for example, every footnote would be preceded with [TN] or [FN] for translator's note/footnote) and the layout person would sort it out during the layout process.

2) Don't have both sets of information as "notes at the bottom of the page." Make one set footnotes and the other set endnotes or an appendix. Or better still, have two sets of endnotes. From my reader's perspective, footnotes on the page are becoming an increasing distraction. I'd much rather have everything together at the end – the end of the chapter, the end of the book — and then it's up to me if I choose to refer to the note when I'm reading or when I'm done.

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