Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page in which you cite another source to support your paper. John Lennon once wrote, 'if life begins at 40, have I been dead for 39?' If this were the first source of information you used in your paper, you would place the number 1 at the end of the quote in your paper and at the bottom of the page, along with the required information.
Footnotes include the following information. First and foremost, the authors name. In this case, it would be written as J. Lennon followed by a comma. The second bit of information would be the work in which the quote appears. The above quote appears in the liner notes of the LP, 'Starting Over.' Your footnote would now look like this: 1. J. Lennon, Starting Over.'
All footnotes are required to state the publisher, the date of publication and the page from which the quote was drawn. An album was chosen for the above quote, so rather than a page number, we would simply refer to the Liner Notes. Your complete footnote would now read: 1. J. Lennon, Starting Over, EMI 1980, Liner Notes. Footnotes are a short method of conveying a larger amount of information as well as an important part of any paper you are writing other than fiction.
It's a good idea to keep a notebook handy with 6 columns. The first column offers a place for you to jot down the page of your article in which you are using a source to support your paper. Column two would enumerate the footnotes. The third column would list the author, while the fourth would list the source. Columns five and six would provide a place to record the publisher and date as well as the page number. This will save hours of time spent looking for the information you had to begin with.