[OS X TeX] Initial indentation in footnotes

[Stephen Anderson]

I am trying to produce a new edition of an old publication, with a translation on facing pages. In the original, some footnotes are continued on a following page, with no number and no initial indentation.  I would like to reproduce this format as faithfully as possible. The unnumbered footnote I can produce with the following macro:

\newcommand\blfootnote[1]{%
  \begingroup
  \renewcommand\thefootnote{}\footnote{#1}%
  \addtocounter{footnote}{-1}%
  \endgroup
}

However, I am having a problem suppressing the initial indentation LaTeX wants to insert in this note. \noindent (before the #1 argument) doesn’t work, because this indentation is not produced by a normal indent, but rather (apparently) by inserting a box containing the footnote number before the text. I can get close by putting \hspace*{-2em} before the #1, but (a) that’s not the exact amount I need, and (b) this brute force approach is the wrong way to do it.  Diligent search has so far failed to turn up a definition of the amount of space inserted between the left margin and beginning of the footnote text (something like \parindent), so I don’t know how to improve on this “solution”.

Can someone tell me how this dimension is defined? Alternatively, is there a way to write the \blfootnote macro so as to suppress the insertion of whatever it is that produces the indentation and the footnote mark? All of the hints I find on the web involve packages that will change the formatting of footnotes in general, but that’s not what I want.  I want to be able to produce a couple of individual notes that arent formatted like the others.


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Steve Anderson