4 ms·

Anthony Grafton Defends the Footnote (1997)

16 points by benbreen 8y ago

keiferski 8y ago
Years ago, I read Infinite Jest, which famously has hundreds of footnotes, so many that the entire last fourth of the book is composed of them. At that time, it seemed innovative and academic in a really intellectual, mind-expanding way, a bit like how inline Wikipedia links probably felt in 2003. I recently started re-reading the book and had the exact opposite reaction. It seemed excessive, bloated, and generally just overdone. I'm left wishing that DFW had incorporated the footnotes into the writing itself and was just more succinct in general. It led me to think that this is probably a subconscious reaction to the "excess of information" age we find ourselves in. This link and Infinite Jest were both written in a pre-Internet age.
- dmux 8y ago
  I believe Infinite Jest uses "endnotes" as opposed to footnotes. One interesting example of footnotes is Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves where different narrators make extensive use of footnotes to add additional details to the story. On many occasions, the "base" story is only a single paragraph and the footnotes will run on for dozens of pages.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mezzanine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mezzanine I gave up after the first quarter or so. Never got into any reading flow.
- mlevental 8y ago
  so many people dont understand the brilliance of infinite jest's endnotes: jumping from place to place storyline to storyline is supposed to make you feel as drug addled as the characters (and i think it's quite effective if you read the book at a brisk pace)
tenkabuto 8y ago
Regarding the use of footnotes in non-fixed media, such as webpages and ePub (ebooks), I feel that the distinction between footnotes and endnotes is somewhat irrelevant because they are hidden at the end of the relevant article/chapter. However, with ebooks the notion of endnotes makes more sense to me, as the notes would be pushed to the back of the book instead of the back of the relevant chapter.
- JadeNB 8y ago
  Does anything about ePub prevent renderers from putting footnotes at the bottom of the physical page to which they logically belong? I find navigating them by touch in their usual placement so cumbersome (requiring tapping on tiny targets, which is usually registered as a page flip since it's in a margin) that I wonder why no alternatives have been explored.

16 points by benbreen 8y ago

Years ago, I read Infinite Jest, which famously has hundreds of footnotes, so many that the entire last fourth of the book is composed of them. At that time, it seemed innovative and academic in a really intellectual, mind-expanding way, a bit like how inline Wikipedia links probably felt in 2003. I recently started re-reading the book and had the exact opposite reaction. It seemed excessive, bloated, and generally just overdone. I'm left wishing that DFW had incorporated the footnotes into the writing itself and was just more succinct in general. It led me to think that this is probably a subconscious reaction to the "excess of information" age we find ourselves in. This link and Infinite Jest were both written in a pre-Internet age.

dmux 8y ago
I believe Infinite Jest uses "endnotes" as opposed to footnotes. One interesting example of footnotes is Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves where different narrators make extensive use of footnotes to add additional details to the story. On many occasions, the "base" story is only a single paragraph and the footnotes will run on for dozens of pages.
- Tomte 8y ago
  Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mezzanine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mezzanine I gave up after the first quarter or so. Never got into any reading flow.
mlevental 8y ago
so many people dont understand the brilliance of infinite jest's endnotes: jumping from place to place storyline to storyline is supposed to make you feel as drug addled as the characters (and i think it's quite effective if you read the book at a brisk pace)

tenkabuto 8y ago

Regarding the use of footnotes in non-fixed media, such as webpages and ePub (ebooks), I feel that the distinction between footnotes and endnotes is somewhat irrelevant because they are hidden at the end of the relevant article/chapter. However, with ebooks the notion of endnotes makes more sense to me, as the notes would be pushed to the back of the book instead of the back of the relevant chapter.

JadeNB 8y ago
Does anything about ePub prevent renderers from putting footnotes at the bottom of the physical page to which they logically belong? I find navigating them by touch in their usual placement so cumbersome (requiring tapping on tiny targets, which is usually registered as a page flip since it's in a margin) that I wonder why no alternatives have been explored.