Wednesday, February 20, 2008
No More Endnotes!
Or how about, "End to Endnotes!" I'm reading a book right now that has endnotes, and damnit, I want to strangle whoever it is that invented these things. Footnotes rule, and endnotes drool. It's that simple. Do not make me hold my place, find the appendix, and look up your little tangent. Let me just look down at the bottom of page, get lost in that text, and then return at my leisure. Do you not realize that footnotes are ultimately more efficient than endnotes, person-who-wrote-this-book? They are. They require less effort and therefore the benefit to cost ratio is higher for footnotes than endnotes. Perhaps you think the number of pages will increase with footnotes instead of endnotes, but I have to argue back that no study to my knowledge has yet to prove that. Besides, theoretically, isn't net neutral to move from endnotes to footnotes? Those pages previously used for your precious endnotes are cut up and distributed throughout the text to accommodate the shorter space for each page's main body text. You want to know what I am doing now with your endnotes? I'm not reading them. No seriously, I'm not reading them. And it's not out of spite. I just cannot be expected to keep turning the damn page to get to the freaking one or two sentence afterthought. I can't and I won't.
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3 comments:
Right you are. Oh how I hate endnotes! I think the rationale for them is that book buyers look at footnotes and think the book will be too technical. So publishes relegate them to the end so the book looks more approachable. I guess it's because books are experience goods that require a big time investment, so publishers have to carefully manipulate people's bookstore impressions of their products.
Ditto. I'm currently having the opposite experience, reading through a book in which the footnotes are so delightful and helpful that I can't imagine why anyone would want to choose otherwise. I would imagine that there are some printing/bottom line factors at work here - in terms of layout, pagination, and economy of space I would imagine endnotes go a long way to simplify things and thus make it much cheaper to print. I would wager that Penguin Classics and their ilk use endnotes almost exclusively in their editions. But I'm with you, they might as well save even more money and leave them out completely because I'm not chasing them down at that point.
I hear you. I want these in footnotes so I can get lost in them, but when they're endnotes, it's just so dang distracting. Sometimes, the best part of a book is the footnotes. But you think, J, that endnotes are more efficient ultimately (putting aside reader preference)? Because I had this crude idea in my head that the endnotes are taking up space, and so are the footnotes, and so in principle isn't it on average neutral in terms of space and ink to switch from end to footnotes? Or is something about a page's layout that I'm not seeing? I suppose it's possible that since footnotes require some additional margin separating them from the main text, that these small slices add up if accumulated over many pages. Whereas endnotes, that kind of thing doesn't exist, since there's no main body from which to separate the endnotes - the endnotes are the main body. So if those small slices on every page used to accomodate footnotes do exist, then probably footnotes create an increase in paper, and ultimately reduce the margins on each book sold. In which case, I can see the reason the bookseller would want to switch to that kind of thing. It's nonetheless sad. Even in reading online, you can't get the footnote experience. Hyperlinks are the next best alternative online, and those are cool, but those are basically digital versions of footnote, requiring you leave you main reading material. Footnotes invite the reader to take a break from his activities, and listen in on something else that, while related, is altogether a different line of thought. That's really harder to do in endnotes. With endnotes, it feels like I'm constantly changing television channels.
Matt, I could see this too. But, you'd think that endnote/footnoted books are already a small niche market in the first place - a self-selected group of people who are already wanting some evidence for various statements. It's not footnoted in fiction, for instance. It's in the history books, or some such. So are those people really intimidated by the look of footnotes?
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