When I decided to translate a really long GACKT interview, I was faced with the problem of how to add the notes & translation notes. The ideal solution was citations like those found on Wikipedia, e.g. numbers in the text that link directly to the footnote at the bottom of the page, and those notes can take you back up to the proper point. There are footnote plugins for WordPress, but apparently those can’t be used on a wordpress.com (not .org) powered blog, not even with the Custom Design upgrade.  Luckily, I found a blog that explained very concisely how to write HTML footnotes:

Compendiums: How to Create Footnotes in HTML

It’s so easy to understand! Mad props to the author.

I have only one thing to add: the code as written on the above site doesn’t change the color of the superscript number in your text. So if you want to do that, you’ll need to add HTML color codes, which you can easily find on various sites, such as this one.

If you don’t have much experience fooling around with the Text editor, I recommend writing a post in the Visual editor first, including different kinds of text (e.g. italics, bold, different colors & heading styles), then switching to the Text editor. Even if you’ve never looked at HTML before, doing that makes it easy to figure out the various codes for the most common effects. I hadn’t done anything with HTML in 10 years or so, but since I did that it was fairly easy to get back into the swing of it.

Besides the various examples on the Compendiums blog, you can see how I put this to use on the page with the above mentioned interview translation: The GACKT Way of Life.