Footnotes: love them or hate them

You know, those obtrusive notes at the bottom of the page that, unless you have very good eyesight, you need a magnifying glass to read. Best described by John Betjeman as the "rash of foot and note disease".

Don`t know about anyone else, but when they appear on almost every page, I find them very distracting, mainly because they interupt the flow of the narrative. I don`t mind the odd (short) footnote every half dozen pages, but any more than that and I begin to loose the will to live!

I`ve been ploughing my way through Boswell`s Life of Johnson - there are footnotes on practically every page, many of them long and drawn out with complicated markings/references etc in the form of astericks, symbols and what have you...

Very informative, I`m sure, but life (this writer`s life) would be so much easier, far less complicated, without all these additions to the main body of the text - it`s like trying to read two books at once.

What do others think? do you find footnotes annoying?

The only time I have found footnotes distracting was in House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. They went on and on, in some cases for another page, and off on a tangent. I found it very hard to follow the footnotes, and then jump back to the main story. The footnotes were very frequent, if I remember rightly; sometimes there would be several on a page. It completely distracted me from the story.

Otherwise, I don't mind them. Sometimes they are full of useful tidbits and references.

I don't mind a few footnotes. What I really enjoy is a nice bibliography. I've discovered some great books this way.

I like footnotes, of course, I was taught to use Turabian throughout college. The only noting method I can't stand is MLA. In-text citation is annoying, in particular when you are reading and the author has two works that are being cited. I that that it disturbs the "flow" of reading and the brackets just stick out like gaping holes in the road. All apologies to our fine arts and MFA people out there. Just can't stand it.

I usually enjoy the footnotes. In some novels, such as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and Infinite Jest, they create an irresistible back story.

I don't mind footnotes.

acton said:

I usually enjoy the footnotes. In some novels, such as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and Infinite Jest, they create an irresistible back story.

Click to expand...

I enjoyed the footnotes in JS&MN, as well. I usually enjoy them, as they create an interesting back story or contribute something of interest. I will admit that they can interrupt the flow of a story, but I only find this a problem when the story isn't interesting enough to keep me engaged.

I haven't ran into too many footnotes. Last one was in the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. And the footnotes were one of the funniest part of the book.

I like them if they help me to better understand what the author is trying to convey. Maybe I'm a little OCD, but if there is a footnote, I will read it. For this reason I prefer that they be at the bottom of the page rather than in the back of the book.

For the last several months I've been working my way through The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. It must have an average of 4 footnotes per page. Flipping constantly to the back makes the reading much more of a chore than it ought to be.

Footnotes are for scholarly or nonfiction works. If a fictional work has footnotes, then the author probably isn't doing his job correctly... unless the footnotes are fictional, too.

You should try Jasper Fforde, for example his "The Eyre Affair". He found a very proper use for the footnotes.

Actually the best I ever could think of What a genious!

Sorry, I am not sure any longer where the Fforde first used his footnotes in that particular way... May be it actually happened in Lost in a Good Book - the sequel of "Eyre Affair"... Never mind, but that is really hilarious!

Do you mean footnotes in fiction only? Footnotes in fiction bother me, but sometimes they get used with good effect (I haven't read JS&MN). Footnotes in non-fiction are often indispensible, though, as long as the footnotes remain shorter than the main text (I've seen this once).

I don't mind footnotes in nonfiction. They help me more than they annoy me. I don't recall reading too much fiction with footnotes; the only author I rememebr reading who uses them is Terry Pratchett, who does a nice job with them.