LaTeX blank after number and before text

Question

How could I make a blank after the number in my footnotes? In a general way, for ALL footnotes!

Example:

good: ¹ Hello World

bad : ¹Hello World

Answer 1

The correct answer is not to redefine \thefootnote, because that adds space wherever the footnote is referenced; for example:

\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\arabic{footnote}~}
\begin{document}
hello\footnote{test\label{foo}} but don't forget about fn.\,\ref{foo}.
\end{document}

Note the extra space when the footnote number is referred to!

The footnote itself (including the number) is placed by the macro \@makefntext, whose default definition is

\parindent 1em\noindent \hb@xt@ 1.8em{\hss \@makefnmark }#1

Here's an example of a replacement that adds some space after the footnote number:

\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\long\def\@makefntext#1{%
  \parindent 1em\noindent\hb@xt@ 1.8em{\hss\@makefnmark}~#1%
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
hello\footnote{test\label{foo}} but don't forget about fn.\,\ref{foo}.
\end{document}

You might also wish to reduce the indent on the left, for example.

Answer 2

EDIT: Ok, redesigned. Ugly hack, but hey, isn't LaTeX just a whole bunch of those?

Put the following into your preamble:

\let\myfootnote\footnote
\renewcommand{\footnote}[1]{\myfootnote{~#1}}

This will simply prefix your footnote text automagically with a non-breaking space, therefore creating a space after the foot note mark at the bottom of the page. And it won't touch the footnote mark in the middle of the text which is why it still works properly directly before punctuation.

Answer 3

\hspace 

can always supply horizontal spacing somewhere.

\footnote{\ insert footnote here}
\footnote{~insert footnote here}

Work, but I do not know if it is the official way to do it. The "~" is officially used in cases like:

Mr.~Smith 

To provide the usual whitespace after the abbreviation "." The "\ " I do not know, I just happend to see its use some time ago after accidently putting it in a sentence.

Answer 4

You could try ~ a non-breakable space