Now what is needed is to add a footnote that is not attached to any place in the document, yet it is counted in the counter and appears. What's more, I want the footnote's number to appear before the words of the note. (So it's like a 'ghost' footnote that refers to nowhere.)
[Tex/LaTex] Footnotes without markers only in the text, and with markers before the note words
footnotes
Related Solutions
Usually it's best not to put footnotes inside floats; the minipage environment sets things up so you can have "local" footnotes for such occasions. E.g.,
\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
...\footnote{blah}...
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}
The same advice holds for the quite common practice of putting notes for tables directly beneath them rather in footnotes on the page itself.
You have to save (using \let) the original definition and reinstate it afterwards. Also, I decrement the footnote counter, so that the blank footnote doesn't increment the index.
\documentclass{article}
\let\svthefootnote\thefootnote
\textheight 1in
\begin{document}
First Footnote,%
\let\thefootnote\relax\footnote{some text}
\addtocounter{footnote}{-1}\let\thefootnote\svthefootnote
next footnote\footnote{some more text}
\end{document}
Alternatively, you can use \footnotetext for the blank footnote, and then you don't have to reset the footnote counter (but you still have to reinstate the definition of \thefootnote).
\documentclass{article}
\let\svthefootnote\thefootnote
\textheight 1in
\begin{document}
First Footnote,%
\let\thefootnote\relax\footnotetext{some text}
\let\thefootnote\svthefootnote
next footnote\footnote{some more text}
\end{document}
Putting this all together, you can make it into a macro, \blankfootnote{}:
\documentclass{article}
\let\svthefootnote\thefootnote
\textheight 1in
\newcommand\blankfootnote[1]{%
\let\thefootnote\relax\footnotetext{#1}%
\let\thefootnote\svthefootnote%
}
\begin{document}
First Footnote,\blankfootnote{some text}
next footnote\footnote{some more text}
\end{document}
And now, for the coup de grace, one can redefine the definition of \footnote, so that the syntax \footnote[]{my footnote}, which would otherwise break LaTeX, now is made to call on \blankfootnote automagically. This way, you don't need to remember the separate command \blankfootnote, but rather just use \footnote with an explicitly blank optional argument:
\documentclass{article}
\let\svthefootnote\thefootnote
\textheight 1in
\newcommand\blankfootnote[1]{%
\let\thefootnote\relax\footnotetext{#1}%
\let\thefootnote\svthefootnote%
}
\let\svfootnote\footnote
\renewcommand\footnote[2][?]{%
\if\relax#1\relax%
\blankfootnote{#2}%
\else%
\if?#1\svfootnote{#2}\else\svfootnote[#1]{#2}\fi%
\fi
}
\begin{document}
First Footnote,\footnote[]{some text}
next footnote\footnote{some more text}
Force footnote number 5 here\footnote[5]{special footnote}
\end{document}
Best Answer
As mentioned in my comment, I would clearly advice against such an approach. If the footnote is interesting to the reader (and I hope it is), he will start searching for its origin in the text and will not find it. No reference, no number!