To determine where to place a note number in relation to punctuation, follow the guidance in section 7.4 of the MLA Handbook. Whenever possible, a note number should be placed at the end of a sentence.

Young wizards at Hogwarts learn how to throw flames by incanting “incendio.”²

If clarity requires that a note be placed somewhere other than at the end of a sentence, the note should generally be placed after a punctuation mark.

Despite Fredric Jameson’s influential imperative to historicize,⁵ Chakrabarty has criticized the “continuous, homogenous” characteristics of this understanding of history (111).

An exception is the dash, which follows a note number.

Positioned in the margins of each scene, the servant⁴—immobilized, silent, cast in shadow—uncannily substantiates Rodriguez’s claim.

In general, a note number should follow a closing parenthesis.

Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. (The original title of the novel was Melymbrosia.)⁸

Occasionally, however, placing a note number inside a closing parenthesis may help clarify the referent. In the following sentence, for instance, the author intends to elaborate on the meaning of the German word Binnenerzählung in a note.

According to Gail Finney, the frame narrative (as distinct from the embedded narrative, or Binnenerzählung³) prevents “penetration of, and subjective identification with, the protagonist” (322).  

Work Cited

MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021. MLA Handbook Plus, 2021, mlahandbookplus.org/.