When I was reading it I remember commenting to myself that what Gibbon had written was actually a very long flattened hypertext document. If you have a chance, just have a look inside Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. And if you must go for endnotes, please don’t restart the numbering for each chapter: it’s hard enough finding the relevant endnote, without also having to work out which chapter I’m in. Annotated references/bibliography at the end. Why not both? Footnotes for relevant asides, and an indication of reference. But I’m 0 for 3, I mean 2.Īny thoughts on David Foster Wallace’s or David Egger’s approach to footnoting? Reply Ssp: It wouldn’t be so embarrassing that I can’t add, if I could spell. (PS: your ‘survey of 10 books’ above doesn’t quite add up to 10) Reply If you are having so many footnotes or so much text in them that it breaks your pages, it’s most likely that re-thinking those to not break the layout will also improve your text. Just try reading a few texts to compare the approaches. If you are writing for your readers, the order of preference should be If they’re just referencing a source I prefer them in an endnote. Although I do like footnotes when they are used sparingly and when they add value to the message. Replyīoth are fine but my personal preference is endnotes. Perhaps it’s a preference of function/usability over style. Given a choice I will go for footnotes for the reasons outlined above. But a few weeks before the book wrapped up, they changed the template and… endnotes! I had to cut and rework as those comments made little sense, and weren’t funny, when put at the back of the book. In fact I wrote the first book expecting footnotes, and had some good jokes in there that worked if they were on the same page. It’s a funny story – there was a day I was passionately in favor of footnotes. It takes a struggle to check for the end notes, and with nice page layout models footnotes might even make the page look interesting. Help me plan my Amtrak Writers Residencyĥ2 Responses to “Footnotes vs.5 Things I Learned From My Amtrak Writer’s Residency.Which is more dangerous: writing badly or reading poorly?.

Footnote vs. endnote format