electronic page is segmented in step 840 to generate a body area on the page 850 and a reference area 860 at some later point in time an additional reference to a footnote is received in step 870 requiring a modification to the rendered page correspondingly the counter for the footnote references is incremented in step 880 and the rectangular area defining the body area is incremented to accommodate a new footnote body in step 890 while at the same time the rectangular area representing the footnote reference area is decremented in step 900 finally in step 910 the page is delivered and displayed as necessary in step 920 fig1 illustrates a transition diagram of one embodiment for rendering footnotes fig1 graphically illustrates the discussion of fig9 above initially the rendered page or data a 930 has a defined rectangular area 950 for receiving footnote references and a defined rectangular area 960 for receiving footnote bodies once an additional footnote reference is received the rendered page a 930 transitions automatically to state a u2032 940 where the size of the rectangular area 970 used to house the footnote references is decreased in size as a result of the necessary expansion of the rectangular area 980 used to house the footnote bodies since an additional footnote reference has been inserted into the rendered page a 1 u2032 940 the foregoing description of an exemplary embodiment of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description it is not intended to be exhaustive nor to limit.