The corresponding-author line on a manuscript has to do two jobs at once: identify which institution each author belongs to, and mark exactly one person (occasionally more than one) as the point of contact editors and readers should reach. Both jobs are usually handled with the same small toolkit — superscript numbers or letters, a handful of symbols, and a footnote — but the exact conventions differ by journal, discipline, and whether the manuscript is prepared in a word processor or LaTeX. This guide covers the practical mechanics: which symbols mean what, how to code the affiliation block by hand, and how to do it in LaTeX using the packages most journals’ templates already assume (authblk, IEEEtran, and ACM’s acmart).
For what the corresponding-author role actually entails once the paper is submitted, see CASRAI’s Corresponding Author Responsibilities guide. This page is about formatting the line itself, not the duties that come with being named on it.
What the corresponding-author line needs to communicate
A properly formatted byline block answers three questions at a glance, without the reader having to guess:
- Which institution does each author belong to? — needed whenever authors don’t all share one affiliation.
- Who should be contacted about this paper? — the corresponding author (or co-corresponding authors).
- Is there anything else notable about a specific author? — equal contribution, a deceased author, a change of address since the work was done.
Every convention below exists to answer one of those three questions using the least visual clutter possible: a superscript character next to a name, keyed to a short line elsewhere on the page or in a footnote.
The building blocks: symbols, superscripts, and footnotes
There is no single universal standard for these symbols — ICMJE’s own manuscript-preparation guidance asks authors to identify affiliations and the corresponding author on the title page, but leaves the exact typographic convention to the journal. That said, the following conventions recur across the large majority of journals and are safe defaults when a target journal’s author instructions don’t specify otherwise:
- Superscript numbers (1, 2, 3…) — the most common way to link an author’s name to one or more affiliations listed separately below the byline. An author affiliated with two institutions carries both numbers, e.g. Name1,2.
- Superscript lowercase letters (a, b, c…) — used by some journals and publishers (notably several Elsevier titles and some physics/math journals) instead of numbers, functionally identical.
- Asterisk (*) — far and away the most common marker for the corresponding author. A footnote or a line under the byline (often introduced “*Corresponding author” or “*To whom correspondence should be addressed”) then gives that person’s email. If a journal permits more than one corresponding author, a second asterisk (**) or a superscript number appended to the footnote is used to distinguish them — see CASRAI’s co-corresponding author convention entry.
- Dagger (†) and double dagger (‡) — conventionally used for notes that aren’t affiliation or correspondence: most often “these authors contributed equally” (co-first authorship), and in older or more traditional style guides, to mark a deceased author. Because dagger already has an established meaning in most journals’ house style, don’t repurpose it for correspondence or affiliation without checking the target journal first.
The one rule that holds everywhere: check the specific journal’s instructions for authors before finalizing symbol choice. Submission systems (ScholarOne, Editorial Manager, OJS) frequently capture affiliation and corresponding-author designation as structured metadata separately from the manuscript file, and that structured data — not the symbols in your Word or LaTeX file — is often what actually determines what prints, so the visual convention in your manuscript mainly needs to be internally consistent and unambiguous, not identical to the journal’s final typeset style.
Formatting it by hand in a word processor
Outside LaTeX, the byline is built manually with a few standard word-processor features:
- Type the full author list in agreed order, using the superscript formatting button (not literal superscript-looking Unicode characters, which can break copy-paste and accessibility) for each affiliation marker and the asterisk for the corresponding author.
- Immediately below the byline, list each numbered/lettered affiliation on its own line, in the same order as first referenced in the byline.
- Add a line (often set as a footnote, or a short paragraph directly under the affiliation list) beginning “*Corresponding author” or “Corresponding author:” followed by the name, institutional address, and email of the designated corresponding author.
- If the journal’s template uses author notes for equal contribution, add a dagger next to each of those authors’ names and a corresponding footnote reading “These authors contributed equally to this work.”
Most journal manuscript templates (Word .docx templates supplied in a journal’s author guidelines) already have this structure built in as placeholder text — replacing the placeholders correctly, rather than reinventing the layout, is usually the safer path.
Formatting it in LaTeX
LaTeX’s default author/and mechanism was designed for a single flat author line and doesn’t natively support per-author affiliation superscripts, so most templates either rely on a dedicated package or on manually placed footnote/thanks calls. The three approaches below cover the large majority of journal and preprint templates.
Plain article class, no package (manual footnotes)
For a short document or a journal with no specific class file, thanks (or footnote inside author) is enough to attach a corresponding-author note directly to a name:
documentclass{article}
begin{document}
title{Paper Title}
author{
Jane A. Smiththanks{Corresponding author: [email protected]}
and John B. Doe
}
maketitle
end{document}This works for a single shared affiliation printed once, but doesn’t scale cleanly to multiple institutions with per-author superscripts — for that, use authblk.
The authblk package
authblk (by Patrick W. Daly, distributed via CTAN) redefines author and adds a separate affil command specifically to handle multiple authors with different affiliations, linked by an optional numeric or symbolic marker:
documentclass{article}
usepackage{authblk}
title{Paper Title}
author[1]{Jane A. Smiththanks{Corresponding author: [email protected]}}
author[2]{John B. Doe}
author[1,2]{Priya K. Rao}
affil[1]{Department of Biology, Example University}
affil[2]{Department of Chemistry, Example University}
begin{document}
maketitle
end{document}Notes on this example:
- The bracketed number after
author(e.g.[1]) is the affiliation marker, matched to anaffilcommand carrying the same number — exactly the numbered-superscript convention described above, generated automatically. - An author with two affiliations takes a comma-separated list,
[1,2], and both superscripts print next to their name. thanks{}inside anauthorcall produces a separate footnote, the standard place to put the corresponding author’s email —authblkdoesn’t have a dedicated “corresponding author” command of its own, sothanks(or an explicitfootnote) is the conventional way to mark it.authblkalso supports an explicit symbol mode (author[*]{...}with a matchingaffil[*]{...}) if a target journal specifically wants symbols instead of numbers.
IEEEtran (IEEE conference and journal templates)
IEEE’s own class file uses a different pair of commands, IEEEauthorblockN for names and IEEEauthorblockA for affiliations, with IEEEauthorrefmark generating the superscript-style reference marks:
documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}
begin{document}
author{
IEEEauthorblockN{Jane A. SmithIEEEauthorrefmark{1}, John B. DoeIEEEauthorrefmark{2}}
IEEEauthorblockA{IEEEauthorrefmark{1}Department of Biology, Example University}
IEEEauthorblockA{IEEEauthorrefmark{2}Department of Chemistry, Example University}
thanks{Corresponding author: Jane A. Smith (email: [email protected]).}
}
maketitle
end{document}Because IEEE’s templates are frequently used unmodified for conference submissions, it’s worth pulling the exact current .cls/.tex sample from the specific conference’s or transaction’s own author-kit page rather than adapting a general example, since IEEE periodically revises the bare-demo files.
ACM’s acmart class
ACM’s acmart class (used for most ACM conference and journal templates) builds the affiliation block from structured sub-fields rather than a single string, and has its own dedicated command for author notes such as corresponding-author or equal-contribution flags:
documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}
begin{document}
title{Paper Title}
author{Jane A. Smith}
authornote{Corresponding author.}
affiliation{
institution{Example University}
department{Department of Biology}
city{City}
country{Country}
}
email{[email protected]}
author{John B. Doe}
affiliation{
institution{Example University}
department{Department of Chemistry}
city{City}
country{Country}
}
email{[email protected]}
maketitle
end{document}authornote{} attaches a footnote to the author immediately preceding it; if the same note needs to apply to a later author too (e.g. two co-corresponding authors), authornotemark[n] repeats the mark without repeating the footnote text, and the numbering of repeated marks is the author’s own responsibility to keep consistent. ACM also provides authorsaddresses{} to override the default address block entirely if a submission needs a single consolidated “Corresponding author:” line instead of per-author affiliation blocks.
Multiple affiliations for one author
An author with two current appointments (a joint faculty position, or a primary institution plus a research center) carries every applicable marker, not just one: Name1,2 in the numeric convention, or repeated affiliation{} blocks in acmart. Don’t try to compress two affiliations into a single combined string (“Department of X, University A and Department of Y, University B”) unless the target journal’s style guide specifically asks for that format — most indexing and metadata systems (including the JATS XML <aff> element most publishers deposit to Crossref) expect one affiliation per structured entry, cross-referenced to the author, not a prose combination. See CASRAI’s author affiliation entry for how this maps to structured manuscript metadata.
Co-corresponding authors
When a journal permits more than one corresponding author, the formatting convention typically mirrors the single-corresponding-author case, duplicated: each co-corresponding author gets their own asterisk (or the same asterisk with both names listed in the corresponding-author footnote), and both are still expected to be reachable and accountable for the paper independently. This is journal-dependent — not every journal allows it, and some cap the number of co-corresponding authors permitted. See CASRAI’s Co-Corresponding Authors guide for how individual publishers handle the shared role, and the co-corresponding author convention entry for the underlying definition.
When an author’s affiliation has changed
An author who has since moved institutions is conventionally still listed under the affiliation where the work was actually done, with a separate “Present address:” footnote giving their current institution — not simply updated to the new affiliation as if that’s where the research happened. In LaTeX this is usually just another thanks or footnote call attached to that author’s name (“Present address: [new institution]”), independent of the numbered/lettered affiliation marker, which still points to the affiliation held during the work.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Superscript drift after adding or removing an author. Renumbering by hand invites off-by-one errors — packages like
authblkgenerate the numbers from the order ofaffilcalls, so a manual override defeats the point of using the package in the first place. - Mixing symbol systems on one title page — e.g. using asterisks for both “corresponding author” and “equal contribution” on the same byline. Reserve a distinct symbol for each meaning.
- Treating LaTeX superscripts as the final word on what prints. Many journals re-typeset the accepted manuscript into their own house format from the structured metadata captured at submission, so getting the submission-system’s separate affiliation/corresponding-author fields right matters as much as the manuscript file itself.
- Forgetting the corresponding author’s ORCID iD, which an increasing number of journals and funders require at submission independent of the print byline — see CASRAI’s ORCID iD entry.
- Using literal Unicode superscript characters instead of real superscript formatting in a Word manuscript — they can render inconsistently across PDF conversion and screen readers, unlike a proper superscript character style.
Frequently asked questions
What symbol is normally used for the corresponding author?
An asterisk (*) is the most common marker, usually paired with a footnote or a line under the byline giving that author’s email. It is a widespread convention, not a universal rule — always confirm against the specific journal’s author instructions.
How do I show that an author has two affiliations?
List both markers next to the author’s name (e.g. superscript 1,2), and give both affiliations separately underneath, each keyed to its own number. In LaTeX with authblk, that’s author[1,2]{Name} plus two separate affil calls.
What LaTeX package should I use for author affiliations?
authblk is the general-purpose option and works with the plain article class. If the target venue supplies its own class file — IEEEtran for IEEE, acmart for ACM — use that class’s own author/affiliation commands instead, since journals typically parse the structured fields those classes produce for their own metadata pipeline.
Do I need thanks or footnote for the corresponding author’s email?
Yes, in the packages covered here (authblk, plain article, and IEEEtran’s typical usage) the corresponding-author note is a footnote attached via thanks or footnote inside the relevant author call — none of them has a dedicated “mark this author as corresponding” command by default. acmart is the exception, with authornote{} serving that purpose directly.
What if two authors are both corresponding authors?
Duplicate the marker and footnote for each co-corresponding author, or combine both into one footnote if the journal prefers a single consolidated line — and confirm the journal actually permits more than one corresponding author before submitting, since not all do. See CASRAI’s Co-Corresponding Authors guide.
