Fairmind Footnote Style

If it’s a Fairmind guide, it has footnotes. Here is how to use them consistently and correctly.

In a Fairmind guide, factual claims must be footnoted with reliable sources. This means that, for the context in which it is cited, a reasonable person would accept a source after checking it. Legitimate concerns, such as an author’s conflict of interest, should be addressed in the footnote itself except as described in “Data from Advocacy Organizations” below.

Basis

Fairmind footnotes follow the note form of The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024), with some differences. The main ones are:

Titles are linked. Readers click the title; URLs are not spelled out separately.
Titles are not enclosed in quotes. The link’s color and/or underline makes clear where the title starts and ends.
Every footnote stands alone. Readers open one footnote at a time, so each gives a full citation. No ibid., no short forms, no “see note 9.”
Page numbers have “p.” or “pp.” except for journal citations. Chicago normally uses bare page numbers everywhere.

Most of what you need to know is in “The Main Pattern” section immediately below. The rest of the content is for reference. If this guide is silent on something, follow Chicago’s note form. Links to resources about Chicago style are at the end.

The Main Pattern

In the guide’s main text, footnote markers are superscript numbers. They link to the footnote text.

The footnote text can be a citation, an explanation, or a combination of these.

A citation runs Author, Title, Descriptor, Source, Date, Pinpoint. Commas separate the parts; a period ends the citation. Omit any part that doesn’t exist.

The source is the publication the item appears in (Vaccines, STAT) or, if none, the organization that issued it (KFF, Congressional Research Service).
The descriptor, used only occasionally, names the kind of item or its number when that helps readers (“policy statement,” “R48982”).
The pinpoint, also occasional, directs readers to the specific part of a long source that supports the statement, such as a page, page range, or section (“p. 12,” “pp. 14–16,” “pt. I-A”).

The main exception to the above is journal citations. Chicago gives journals a special form, which we keep: Journal volume, no. issue (year): pages.

Here are a few other, less used exceptions:

Statutes and session laws: We use standard Bluebook form, which readers of legal citations expect and which Chicago also follows: “42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11.” A session law ends with a parenthetical giving where it is codified.
Court decisions: Unlike statutes, these don’t use Bluebook form. The reporter citation (562 U.S. 223) takes the descriptor’s place, and the court and full date go in the source and date positions rather than in a parenthetical. For a Supreme Court decision not yet in U.S. Reports, use the docket number instead (No. 24-109).
Books: The publisher is the source, and the date is the year alone.

Examples

Here are examples of the most common scenarios:

News article: Author, Title, Source, Date.

Helen Branswell, When It Comes to Vaccine Schedules, the U.S. Is Now the Outlier, STAT, January 9, 2026.

Organization’s web page, no author: Title, Source, Date.

State Vaccine Requirements for Children, KFF, accessed September 26, 2026.

Report with a descriptor: Title, Descriptor, Source, Date.

The 2026 Childhood Immunization Schedule, R48982, Congressional Research Service, June 11, 2026.

Journal article: Author, Title, Journal volume, no. issue (year): pages.

Sara Farina et al., Childhood Mandatory Vaccinations: Current Situation in European Countries and Changes Occurred from 2014 to 2024, Vaccines 12, no. 11 (2024): 1296.

Court decision with a pinpoint: Title, reporter citation, Source, Date, Pinpoint.

Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, 562 U.S. 223, Supreme Court of the United States, February 22, 2011, pt. I-A.

Elaboration and a source

As of October 8, 2026, the CDC had counted 4,080 confirmed measles cases in 2026, 96% of them linked to outbreaks. (Measles Cases and Outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed October 13, 2026.)

Source and a comment about the source

John D. Grabenstein, What the World’s Religions Teach, Applied to Vaccines and Immune Globulins, Vaccine 31, no. 16 (2013): 2011–2023. The author was employed by Merck Vaccines, a vaccine manufacturer, when he wrote the review, a potential conflict of interest the paper discloses. We found no published criticism of the paper’s factual claims.

Elaboration and multiple sources

Results vary with the population surveyed and the question’s wording. In a survey of parents conducted in July and August 2025, 81% said public schools should require measles and polio vaccines, with some medical or religious exceptions. (Audrey Kearney, Most Parents Nationally and in Florida Want Schools to Require Vaccines, KFF, September 4, 2025.) In an August 2026 poll of U.S. adults, 65% said students in K–12 schools should be required to have vaccinations. (Taylor Orth, 65% of Americans Support Vaccine Requirements for K-12 Schools, YouGov, August 11, 2026.)

The rest of this guide covers details: how to style each part, patterns for other source types, and what to do when a footnote also has explanatory text.

Citation Rules

Titles. Link the title, with no enclosing quotes. Use title case for every English title, including news headlines and web page titles, whatever capitalization the source uses. Follow Chicago’s title-case rules, which lowercase articles, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions of any length (“after,” “from,” “during”). Italicize titles of books and of court cases. When a title ends in a question mark or exclamation point, omit the comma after it.

Authors. Write names in normal order (Helen Branswell), including the first author. With two authors, give both names (“Lien Anh Ha Do and Kim Mulholland”). With three or more, give the first author followed by “et al.” with no comma before it. Keep initials as the source prints them, but add periods: “Joshua T. B. Williams.”

Organizations. When an organization is both author and publisher, name it once, in the source position after the title. Drop a leading “The” (World Health Organization, not The World Health Organization). Use the organization’s own styling (Health Resources & Services Administration).

Source names. Italicize journals, magazines, newspapers, and other news publications, including online-only outlets and the news sites of TV networks and stations (STAT, Fox News). Set organizations, agencies, wire services, and other websites in roman (KFF, Associated Press).

Dates. Spell out the month: “January 9, 2026.” Use the most specific date the source shows:

A publication date, if the source shows one.
“updated September 1, 2026” if the source shows an update date, which replaces the publication date.
“accessed September 26, 2026” if the source shows no date, or if it is a continuously updated data page such as a dashboard or state-by-state table.

Links. Link the best available version, in this order:

Free full text, such as PubMed Central or the publisher’s open-access page.
The DOI, as https://doi.org/…, when the text is paywalled.
The authoritative paywalled page, when there is no DOI.

Link the original publisher, not a mirror or aggregator (congress.gov for CRS reports, not everycrsreport.com). Within one guide, link the same source to the same URL every time.

Pinpoints. A pinpoint points readers to the specific page or section that supports the statement. It comes last in the citation.

Label every pinpoint: “p.” for one page, “pp.” for several (p. 12; pp. 14–16), and other locators as the source uses them (pt. I-A, sec. 3). For a court’s slip opinion, label pages “slip op.” (slip op. pp. 23–26); for a separate opinion, name it (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
Journal citations are the exception: the numbers after the colon are bare, giving the pages cited, or the article’s full page span when the citation refers to the whole article. Some journals number articles instead of pages; give the article number after the colon. Any further locator is labeled: “Vaccines 12, no. 11 (2024): 1296, sec. 3.2.”
A pinpoint must be findable in the version you link. If the linked version uses different numbering or none (common with HTML versions of court opinions), link a version that matches the pinpoint, or use a locator that works in the linked version, such as a section or part (“pt. I-A”).

Explanatory Text, Parentheses, and Multiple Sources

Two Kinds of explanatory text

Elaboration adds detail about the point in the main text, such as more detail, context, or a caveat about the claim. It goes before the source or sources it relies on.
Source comment says something about the source itself, such as its funding, a disclosed conflict of interest, its methodology or limitations, or how it defines or classifies something. It goes after the source. A comment longer than a sentence or two probably belongs in Editorial Choices.

Parentheses

Parentheses separate explanatory text from the source that supports it. A source that directly follows explanatory text goes in parentheses, and a comment about that source goes inside the same parentheses, after the citation. A source with no explanatory text before it, such as one that opens the footnote, stands without parentheses, and a comment about it follows as ordinary prose.

Place each parenthetical right after the statement it supports, with the closing period inside.
Sources with no text between them share one form, separated by semicolons: inside one set of parentheses if they follow explanatory text, or without parentheses if they don’t.
Keep parentheses that belong to a citation, such as a journal’s “(2024),” even inside a parenthesized source. Don’t switch them to brackets.

Lead-Ins

If placement alone doesn’t show what a source supports, introduce it with a short lead-in such as “On compensation:”. Introduce further reading that doesn’t directly support the text with “See also.”

A lead-in isn’t explanatory text, so it doesn’t affect whether its source takes parentheses. It just comes first: at the start of the parenthetical, or at the start of the sentence. A lead-in that follows a parenthetical starts a new sentence, and its source stands without parentheses.

Links and Cross-References

Inline links. Don’t use an inline link in place of a citation. If a link substantiates a claim in the main text, make it a citation. A link that only helps readers understand a term in the footnote, such as a page explaining what a government program is, can be inline.
Cross-references to other parts of the guide are prose, outside parentheses, and go last: “For more, see Section Title in Editorial Choices.”

More Examples

Book or book-length report. Author, Title, Publisher, year. This differs from Chicago, which uses (Place: Publisher, year).

Institute of Medicine, Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism, National Academies Press, 2004.

Presentation, policy statement, or other genre worth naming. Put a lowercase descriptor after the title.

Mona Marin, 25 Years of Varicella Vaccination Program in the United States: Health and Economic Impact during 1995–2019, presentation to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, February 23, 2023.

Executive order. Title, Executive Order number, White House, date.

Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans, Executive Order 14420, White House, August 10, 2026.

Statutes and session laws. Use Bluebook form. Link the code section.

42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11.

National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-660, tit. III, 100 Stat. 3755 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34).

Recent Supreme Court decision. When a case isn’t yet in U.S. Reports, use the docket number in place of the reporter citation, and link the Court’s slip opinion.

Louisiana v. Callais, No. 24-109, Supreme Court of the United States, April 29, 2026, slip op. pp. 22–24.

Multiple sources with lead-ins

On the requirement to file claims with the compensation program first: 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11. On the program’s history and purpose: Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, 562 U.S. 223, Supreme Court of the United States, February 22, 2011, pt. I-A.

For example, End Assisted Suicide is an organization working on behalf of people with disabilities to overturn states’ PAD laws. (End Assisted Suicide, home page, accessed October 16, 2026.) See also Disability Groups Opposed to Assisted Suicide Laws, Not Dead Yet, accessed October 16, 2026.

Typography

Use curly quotes and apostrophes everywhere, including inside titles.
Use en dashes and full numbers for ranges of pages and years (868–878; 2019–2020, not 2019–20). Keep a dash in a title as the source prints it.
Write “et al.” in roman, with no comma before it.
Write volume and issue as “12, no. 11,” with a lowercase “no.”
When an italic title is linked, put the italics inside the link.
Write “§” and “§§” with a space after them: “42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11.”
End every footnote with a period, including one that is only a linked statute.

Data from Advocacy Organizations

Normally, we want to address concerns with a footnote’s source within the footnote itself. An exception is when a guide repeatedly cites data from an advocacy organization. Rather than repeatedly disclaiming the advocacy organization’s non-neutrality in footnotes, just note it in an “Advocates as Data Sources” section within “Editorial Choices.” See that section in the Abortion guide for an example.

Chicago Resources

The full Chicago manual requires a subscription. These free resources cover most cases:

Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide: Notes and Bibliography, the publisher’s sample citations for common source types. Start here.
Chicago Style Q&A, the editors’ searchable answers to readers’ questions. Useful for edge cases.
Purdue OWL: Chicago Manual of Style 18th Edition, the most thorough free walkthrough of notes and bibliography style.

Apply the Fairmind differences above to anything you find there.