Footnotes or Endnotes

[laconicsax]

If you had to chose only one:

[Unvanguard]

1. Excessive footnotes make the page format weirder.

Endnotes are just so much neater.

[laconicsax]

2. Endnotes require a disruption in reading.

You have to mark your place, find the end note and hope that they aren't by chapter because then you have to find the chapter then the endnote, read the endnote, then find your place in the text again and resume reading.

Footnotes simply require that you keep your place, glance down to read, then glance back up to resume reading the main text.

[Unvanguard]

4. That's assuming you want to read them.

Often they're just citations--useful in certain contexts, but not continually.

[laconicsax]

5. They're better for citations than parenthetical citations and endnotes.

All the information you could ever want or need is right there on the page.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Oh gawd ...

I just had a horrible flashback.

One of the history lists to which I subscribed actually devolved into something near a flame war over this issue. It was insane.

(I prefer footnotes, but I'm saying that very, very quietly in case any of the people from that list are lurking and see me.)

[struggle4progress]

6. Footnotes for remarks, endnotes for citations

[JVS]

7. Footnotes are better. Endnotes suck but they're easier for editors.

The best system I ever saw was Jaraslav Pelikan's margin notes in his History of Christianity.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0226653757/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

take a look at pages 9-14 and tell me that is not a beautiful system that allows for smooth reading, yet still allows the reader to check on what is informing him to say what he's saying.

[laconicsax]

9. They're ok. I prefer the margins empty so there's space to write if necessary.

Margin notes can go to far--like when they simply say

"It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

[JVS]

10. Use the other margin.

[elshiva]

8. I can't choose one. When I write I prefer endnotes, but when I read

I prefer footnotes. The teacher always said write 5-6 pages on this topic and I always thought it was "cheating" to put footnotes, takes up too much of the page. If I'm reading, I like to look at the bottom of the page for the notes instead of flipping to the back or the end of the chapter to read the notes.

[petronius]

11. Neither - say what you need to say in the text. If it's not important to

be in the body of the text, then you're just going off on a tangent. Focus your writing, cite your sources with a simple (author,date) and a literature cited section, and be done with it...

[ghostsofgiants]

12. If it's a short essay, endnotes. If it's a book or longer essay, footnotes.