Comments on: Footnote folly

By: insulin

insulin — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:12:03 +0000

znglebf

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:11 +0000

I personally find some endnotes invaluable. Example, Peter Watts’s latest book, Blindsight, has endnotes giving the science on which his fiction draws. I’m hoping he will eventually put the endnotes up on his website http://www.rifters.com/index.htm as working links to articles, where copyright allows. Endnotes to me are very, very primitive hypertext, the sort of connection to ideas that gets bigger the farther you go into it.

Aside –
I notice the forum software doesn’t use “that” to introduce comments, which reminds me to ask, wouldn’t the example given:

McHugh J said that

By: Neil

Neil — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 23:47:14 +0000

I don’t find that the author date system breaks up the flow of the text at all. In fact, I find it less disruptive than constant ibids and loc cits. If I were to rationalize my preferences, I would note that constant footnotes require one to keep glancing down to the bottom of the page. But it may well be that it’s just a question of what system I use most.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:00:42 +0000

Asdas - Though we could equally say - as Orwell did - that rigid over-application of generally good sytlistic advice can also be harmful, losing as in this case a shade of meaning, or disrupting the flow of the sentence, as unsplitting infinitives can often do.

By: asdas

asdas — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:50:46 +0000

I think what Derrida Derider has in mind, above, is this quote from Orwell: “One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.” Certainly this sort of double negative is not ungrammatical, but I think it is not unreasonable to say that either the writer should remove “not un-”, remove the entire not unsuperfluous phrase (”not un-X”), or some up with a not unoriginal way of making the point.

The insight that Orwell has on this *specific* usage habit: the *real* reason people say “not un-” isn’t because, after careful thought, they decide it is the best way to express a concrete idea, but rather because “not un-” sounds smooth, rolls off the mind as easily as the most dead metaphors, and gives a false impression of reasonable moderation that insulates a writer from having to understand what he means.

Against Damien, I would prefer my *footnotes* to be discursive, and the endnotes to be citations. I think the academic fetish with correctly and exhaustively sourcing one’s work is a bit overdone, and I almost never look at the sources until I am ready to sit down and look up all of the sources for a particular set of claims. (Obviously this depends on one’s field; in science, with more concise papers, and law, with all the precedents, the line between the purpose served by a discursive note (an addendum to the argument that will be critical to the concerns of some people, but less so to others) and by a citation (substantiating or sources ones factual claims) becomes blurry.)

By: John Quiggin » The end for endnotes?

John Quiggin » The end for endnotes? — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:43:12 +0000

[...] * Footnote/endnote: A bit more discussion of this at Andrew Norton’s blog (thanks to Damien Eldridge for locating this for me) [...]

By: Crooked Timber » » The end for endnotes?

Crooked Timber » » The end for endnotes? — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:39:39 +0000

[...] Footnote/endnote: * Footnote/endnote: A bit more discussion of this at Andrew Norton’s blog (thanks to Damien Eldridge for locating this for me) posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 1:31 am Post a comment [...]

By: Sacha

Sacha — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:09:52 +0000

Agree Boris.

Also, it’s hard for beginners to know where to start - like a lot of IT stuff, it’s hard to get into to and a lot of the info is designed for people who already who a fair bit about it.

By: Boris

Boris — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:11:13 +0000

“LaTeX is freeware - and there is a wealth of material on it on the net.”

This is another problem with LaTeX - so much info, you don’t know where to start.

By: Boris

Boris — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:10:08 +0000

The other downsides of LaTeX, are (1) the fact that you do not see the result of the formatting on the screen as you type (even though you can run a quick command to get it in a few seconds) and (2) you need to remember quite a few commands like in a programming language. I used to live with both of these difficulties, but as I grew older and the mind grew more lazy, I have got a commercial implementation http://www.mackichan.com/ which solves (2) completely, and solves (1) to a large extent. However (2) is mostly relevant to math equations.