A footnote explaining a marker that isn't on the page
Two prices, both marked with a single asterisk. Below them, two footnotes — one for the asterisk, and one for a double asterisk that appears nowhere in the dialog. You scan the screen twice looking for something that was never there.
Facts cited
| Air passengers worldwide | ~5.2 billion (2026 forecast) | IATA |
|---|---|---|
| Markers used on screen | single asterisk only — on both prices | observed: Icelandair fare-upgrade dialog |
| Markers explained below | single and double | the double-asterisk footnote has no referent in the dialog |
| Global life expectancy | 73 years | World Bank, 2023 |
Who can fix it
- Owner
- Airline booking flows (observed: Icelandair) — and disclosure boilerplate generally
- Channel
- Airline web feedback · consumer protection authorities
An upgrade dialog shows two fares: GBP 319.91 and GBP 399.91, each carrying a single asterisk. Underneath sit two footnotes — one for the asterisk, explaining that these are average per-passenger prices, and then this:
Using a round-trip fare as a one-way is permitted only for return flights, subject to a conversion fee and any fare difference.
…introduced by a double asterisk that appears nowhere on the screen. You read it, look up, scan both columns, find no second marker, and eventually conclude the sentence isn’t about anything you can see.
Why this is more than a typo
A footnote marker is a promise of a referent. It’s a pointer: “this specific thing has a condition.” An unanchored footnote breaks that in both directions:
- You can’t tell what it modifies. Does the conversion fee apply to one of these fares? Both? Something on the previous screen? The sentence is precise and its scope is unknowable.
- It signals the disclosures aren’t maintained. A block of legal text pasted wholesale, markers and all, without checking which apply here. Once you notice that, you stop trusting the rest of the small print — and the small print is where the fees live.
There’s an irony worth naming: disclosure text exists to inform the buyer and to protect the seller legally. Pasting it as boilerplate undermines both. A condition disclosed against a marker that doesn’t exist has arguably not been disclosed at all.
Why it happens
Almost certainly reuse: one footnote block shared across several screens of the booking flow. Somewhere there is a page with a double asterisk — a one-way/round-trip toggle, most likely — and this dialog inherited the entire block rather than the applicable half.
That’s the general shape: shared boilerplate rendered unconditionally. The same instinct that puts “Terms apply” on a page with no terms, or a required-field asterisk on a form where nothing is required.
The fix
Render only the footnotes whose markers actually appear on the page. If a template can emit the marker, it should emit the note; if it can’t, it shouldn’t. That’s a conditional, not a redesign.
The principle: never print a reference to something that isn’t there. It costs the reader real attention — they will look — and it costs you the credibility of everything else in the same block.
Filed as a micro case
Only a minority of people read footnotes at all, so the aggregate lands under a lifetime a year. It’s published because it’s a clean, checkable specimen of a very common failure — and because it takes about four seconds to verify from a screenshot, making it the cheapest fact-check on this entire site.
Needs reproducing. This is one dialog, one booking, one airline. To be quoted it should be re-checked against the current flow, and the screen that does carry the double asterisk located — which would confirm the shared-boilerplate theory rather than leaving it an inference. Booking flows also vary by route, currency and fare type.
Difficulty to fix: none
The page tells you to look for something. There is nothing to look for. One conditional in a template, and the sentence either finds its anchor or stops being printed.