More on Footnotes (9/28/21)

In prior editions of my Federal Tax Procedure Book, I offered Appendix C as a digression on footnotes.  I posted a blog entry with that Appendix C in its final version before I dropped the Appendix from the FTPB.  See On Footnotes and the Demise of Appendix C from FTPB (7/28/21), here.  Still, I continue my interest in footnotes and the uses and abuses of footnotes.  So this posting caught my eye:  Eugene Volokh, Footnotes and Exile (The Volokh Conspiracy 9/26/21), here.  It is very short, which tempts me to “copy and paste” it,  I don’t want to come close to some copyright or other infringement, so I just link the offering.  I will offer this quote (fair use):  “Footnotes are the Siberia of your article or your brief—and endnotes, I suppose, the Kamchatka (the peninsula, not the vodka).”

On the endnote thing, I have to say that I generally do not like endnotes.  Like much of life, the benefits of choices are mixed.  Footnotes are easier to read because one need only glance down to the bottom of the page, rather than having to turn to the end of the publication for the endnote.  Endnotes require some extra effort and thus are less distracting than footnotes simply because a reader may not take the trouble to read the endnote.  The downside of footnotes is that they are too easy to read, simply a downward glance will work.  If they are easy to read, the reader may be tempted to read the footnote which usually distracts from the flow of the text.  So the question is whether your footnotes are of such quality that you want to discourage most readers from reading them; if so, use endnotes.  If, however, you want your readers to sometimes actually read the note, use footnotes.

At one time I offered my FTPB with notes as footnotes and endnotes (two separate versions).  It was easy to turn the footnotes version into an endnoted version.  I finally concluded that, if a reader does not want to be distracted by footnotes or endnotes (most students), then get the Student edition without footnotes or endnotes.  If a reader sometimes or often reads footnotes, then the footnoted Practitioner edition is the way to go.  I just felt that few would be interested in endnotes, so I quit generating an endnote edition.

Finally, one of my favorite Hebrew Bible authors, James Kugel, in his great book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, uses both footnotes and endnotes.  I had never seen that done before, but he uses both to great effect.  The book is written both for scholars and general interested readers.  Here is how he explains what he does:

A word about the book’s format: This book comes with two sets of notes. The first contain points of information intended for the general reader. These are marked with an asterisk (*) in the text and appear at the bottom of the page. The second set of notes—marked with numbers—is intended for specialists in the field; these notes consist mostly of references to scholarly articles or books, or are discussions of technical matters not intended for the general reader. They are found at the back of this book.

Indeed, Professor Kugel takes it one step further.  He explains:

A few further items are of such length that it was decided not to include them in the volume itself (since their inclusion would have added considerably to its cost), but instead to post them on a Web site where interested readers may consult them.

I suppose that my FTPB blog postings may serve this type of function, although my FTPB blog postings are most commonly not deep dives into the subject, whereas Kugel's web posting are deep dives.  (Kugel does use the blog for weekly Torah readings, but again given the blog format not conducive to deep dives.)

I have to say that I read Kugel's footnotes and many (perhaps most) of his endnotes and his web offerings.  His book is the best of many I have read on the Hebrew Bible, discussing how scholars think the text of the Hebrew Bible came about and how the text has been interpreted by both Jews and Christians (who adopted the text as their Old Testament).