Because the style is used for the footnote reference in the main body of the document as well as at the beginning of the footnote itself, a change to the style affects both instances. The second problem is that even if you could define such special characters in the Footnote Reference style, it wouldn't help in this case. Thus, you can change the Footnote Reference style so that the references appear as, say, unsuperscripted, but you cannot through the style specify that the reference be followed by a period. First, the Footnote Reference style is a character style, which means that it defines the appearance of the text itself, not the appearance of any special characters after the text, such as a period and a space or tab. If you change the formatting of this style, you change how the actual footnote reference appears. The appearance of both of these references is controlled by the Footnote Reference character style. There are actually two footnote references-one in the main body of the document and the other at the beginning of the actual footnote. This is a bit more complex of a topic than it may at first appear. She wonders how she can get Word to handle this formatting automatically. Some of the style guides that Nancy follows now specify that footnote references actually be regular (not superscripted) digits followed by a period. When she inserts a footnote, the footnote reference (in the footnote area) shows as a superscripted number.

Nancy notes that for years she has used Word's footnotes with no problem.

Microsoft word endnote superscript