Semantic elements for footnote list and content

Question

Given a set of footnotes at the end of an article:

<article>
    <p>Some content here</p>
    <ol class="footnotes">
        <li id="footnote-1">Footnote 1 text</li>
        <li id="footnote-2">Footnote 2 text</li>
    </ol>
</article>

Is there an HTML5 container element more descriptive/semantic than a ol or div with class = "footnotes" (or is there an appropriate container that should be wrapping the ol element)? And, is there a text element more descriptive/semantic than a p or li for each individual footnote? If not, is there perhaps a microformat out there that at least establishes some common class names to use?

Note this question is not about the markup for footnote links - that's already been discussed and it appears that there is still no element in HTML to semantically identify a footnote link. I left out the footnote links and back-links from the sample markup here for brevity.

I thought `footer` was more appropriate for the footer of the entire web page? e.g. I'm using it as a page footer with copyright, etc. What if there are multiple `article`s on a page, each with their own footnotes? — Mike Mertsock, Aug 10 '13 at 13:02
That's what I figured. That's not related to my question at all though. — Mike Mertsock, Aug 10 '13 at 13:33
@esker - From [the spec](http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#the-footer-element) "The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element." `Article` elements are sectioning content elements. So each `article` can have its own `footer` — Alohci, Aug 10 '13 at 13:40
@Alohci excellent, I did not know that. Why don't you write this as an answer? Though I would like to see if others have different solutions or evidence that there is no better option. — Mike Mertsock, Aug 10 '13 at 13:42
@esker - Because 'footer` is arguably not the right answer. `footer`s are primarily for metadata about the content of the section, and any given footnote may or may not meet that criterion. — Alohci, Aug 10 '13 at 13:50
As of today, there is a footnote tag: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27044589/syntactic-sugar-in-html-xhtml/66450041#66450041 — davidmpaz, Mar 03 '21 at 02:49

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 15 '20 at 15:18

There isn't any dedicated mechanism yet, but footnotes either with linked, or simple footer notes with list elements as well as side notes can be merged into a common suggested alternative markups. You might have seen this already - "HTML5 Common Idioms without dedicated elements"

Sure it's more viable to wrap each footnotes within a <section> element if more than one occurs within a single <article>. If that's not the case you can wrap 'em within <footer> or <aside>. Then content elements follows as usual. Like <p> for descriptive segments.

Here is another example of "Footnotes with microformats"

Semantic elements for footnote list and content

1 Answers1