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Traditionally, footnotes are straightforward explanations of terms or passages. Tech writers, in their grandiosity, have perverted them to contain randomass tan
by carabiner 3y ago
Traditionally, footnotes are straightforward explanations of terms or passages. Tech writers, in their grandiosity, have perverted them to contain randomass tangents that no one really cares about.
- leoc 3y agoFootnotes are mainly straightforward-enough glosses and references, but there have always been digressions (and quite often sniping) in there too. The C19 has some real specimens.
- mamediz 3y agoI like footnotes, or in this case maybe we should call "endnotes". David Foster Wallace was known to use them a lot, sometimes he would put footnotes in footnotes.
- dmvdoug 3y agoGood old postmodernist literature. So meta.
- dmvdoug 3y agoWhereas legal opinions use them either as a citation dump (known as “collecting cases”), as a place to bracket issues that are not being decided, or as a place to put a substantive response to a separate opinion in the case (if you’re an appellate court).