(Untitled)

[raindrenched]

Dear books of a scholarly nature (especially those published in the last decade and a half):

I would be much obliged if you would, in fact, place all footnotes at the bottom of the page on which they are enumerated, instead of, say, the very back of the book

Comments

[gramarye1971]

There are times when I actually prefer that footnotes be endnotes instead -- a lot of history books I've worked with have extensive footnotes that are more than merely source citations, and putting them all at the bottom of the page would be a type-setter's nightmare and would kill my brain to read them. I've seen books where the notes are put at the end of the chapter, and I rather like that format since you can go back and refer to the chapter you're looking for, but that seems to apply mostly to edited books where each chapter is written by a different person.

I do sympathise, though. It's an absolute pain when you have to read with one thumb in the back of the book to check the footnotes at the end of every damned sentence.

[raindrenched]

That's a good point about endnotes. I just ran across another book this afternoon that is using footnotes where it should probably be using endnotes as every page is half text and half footnotes. >_<

I can't win! ;)

[riansnider]

I loathe that practice as well.

Even if the note is like three pages long, I'd rather have it annoyingly placed in the middle of the chapter rather than even more annoyingly placed at the end.

P.S. I once saw footnotes inside footnotes.

[raindrenched]

I once saw footnotes inside footnotes.

I FEAR. O_O

[riansnider]

Well, to be fair, it was a pre-publication paper. ;)