Why do many books, magazines and papers have footnotes in end of chapter/paper/book.Every time you want to read the footnote you have to go on a search mission....and then often on another searh mission to find back to where you where reading in the first place...Many fantastic books, magazines, journals with footnotes in End...but they wold be even more fantastic if they had footnotes on bottom of each page. This is not matter of tast, this is matter of common sense?Only reason to hide footnotes is because you don't want people to read them, but then why include them in the first place? keep up the good work folks, but move your footnotes to bottom of each page!

on the topic of footnotes, I think it was the CFA L2 exam a couple of years ago set an exam question on a footnote in the assigned reading (ok, it was one question out of a total of 240 on the exam, but still, anyone using studynotes rather than the original texts was out of luck on that question)

Agree with you, collector, but many journals insist the footnotes go at the end, and chances are that certain book publishers do also.I've used footnotes for things that are asides when I don't want to interrupt the flow of the prose.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ppauperAgree with you, collector, but many journals insist the footnotes go at the end, and chances are that certain book publishers do also.I've used footnotes for things that are asides when I don't want to interrupt the flow of the prose.What have you written lately, mr. ppauper ?

the reason for this is that the ratio of good authors to bad ones is zero. most people can't express themselves concisely, their brain is oozing into footnotes, it sucks. i feel bad to say that, because i have never written a book, nor would i be able to write footnote-free. i am very often very pissed off about that footnote business myself.there are some "good" books that contain footnotes. an example is the landau-lifschitz series, but what do i know about that??

QuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeWhat have you written lately, mr. ppauper ?That's Dr P.Pauper to you, and I've published a number of papers. Maybe not the great American novel, but it's a start.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CollectorMany fantastic books, magazines, journals with footnotes in End...but they wold be even more fantastic if they had footnotes on bottom of each page. This is not matter of tast, this is matter of common sense?Only reason to hide footnotes is because you don't want people to read them, but then why include them in the first place? keep up the good work folks, but move your footnotes to bottom of each page!Unless you have a professional typesetter, it is amazingly painful to put the footnotes at the bottom of the page. Add/remove/delete something then everything moves around. Putting footnotes at the end means one less really annoying piece of busywork you need to do in order to get a paper out. (Getting the footnotes and the references to match and the note in proper citation style is painful enough.) You can try to push the busy work to the publisher, but they are either small professional association with barely the money to keep the lights running, or big massive publishing company that wants to pinch every penny they can so that the CEO can afford his corporate jet.I suppose that sophisticated typography software will help, but most people have trouble with style sheets and forcing people to put footnotes at the bottom will just convince people to publish elsewhere.

QuoteOriginally posted by: unkpaththe reason for this is that the ratio of good authors to bad ones is zero. most people can't express themselves concisely, their brain is oozing into footnotes, it sucks. i feel bad to say that, because i have never written a book, nor would i be able to write footnote-free. i am very often very pissed off about that footnote business myself.there are some "good" books that contain footnotes. an example is the landau-lifschitz series, but what do i know about that??Indeed.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ppauperQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeWhat have you written lately, mr. ppauper ?That's Dr P.Pauper to you, and I've published a number of papers. Maybe not the great American novel, but it's a start.That's not your real name so why should I believe you?

Most books, journal articles, conform to the APA style guide for referencing materials. The use of endnotes, where the referened materials is printed on the same page in small print is considered outdated. The other way to reference material is by the MLA format. APA is the format used by the college that I attended. Link comparing APA and MLA

hmm, my book has footnotes on the same page. The standard amsbook style in latex keeps them on the same page as well. I think the tradition of having them at the end is more appropriate for humanities subjects where they have to have little notes to justify where they got everything from (instead of proof), these little notes are not worth reading unless you actually want to look something up.

QuoteOriginally posted by: twofishUnless you have a professional typesetter, it is amazingly painful to put the footnotes at the bottom of the page... c o m p u t e r

Unless you go for very long documents (hundreds of pages) then MS Word easily handles footnotes.I love footnotes, I hate endnotes. Endnotes are incredibly painful for reading.

If you have several and very long footnotes that would consume more than half a page, then endnotes would look better.

I'm reading a book at the moment where almost every page has about three-quarters of its area devoted to the the footnotes. It looks fine. But then it's not on a quant topic.