How to handle footnotes in tables

This is covered in one of my 'minimal examples' which you can download from this site. Page footnotes do not work in tables because they are stuck in the table and have no way of `escaping’ to the main page. Good typographic style avoids footnotes in tables.

If you must use them, then make them footnotes to the table, not footnotes to the page. Fortunately this is easy in LaTeX. Put the tabular environment in a minipage and the footnotes are handled correctly.

\begin{table}

\begin{minipage}[t]{\textwidth}

\centering

\begin{tabular}{llll}

May & Jun & Jul & Aug\footnote{Really! I will make a note of that.}

\\

2 & 4 & 6 & 9

\\

6 & 7 & -- & 9\footnote{This also deserves a mention.}

\\

\end{tabular}

\end{minipage}

\caption{This is the table with the footnotes.}

\label{t:theTable}

\end{table}

This will work fine and looks beautiful.