A flick of the eyes and you get a quick idea of whether or not the note is worth reading. You see the superscripted number and you decide if you want more information or not. A quick glance at my bookshelf reveals two books that would be very different if the footnotes had become endnotes instead: Richard Armour's Twisted Tales of Shakespeare, which uses them in the way Groucho Marx would make his brilliant asides and, coincidentally, The Riverside Shakespeare, which annotates Will's text with explanations of terms and occasional historical commentary. Moving them to the easily ignored back of the book just makes it more accessible for people put off by countless references to university presses and innumerable 'Ibids.'īut I respectfully submit that footnotes are essential. The notes themselves are essential, of course any work of even casual academia needs references for cross-checking and further research.

Another guess, this time at motivation: in an effort to encourage more of the buying public to approach academic books undaunted, more footnotes have been moved to endnotes. I have to wonder: when exactly did footnotes become so despised? At a guess, I'd say it started around the early 1990s, but I didn't really notice it until a few years ago. Published by John Hopkins University Pressīefore I get to discussing Bradford Wright's Comic Book Nation, I'd like to say a few words about footnotes. Review | Comic Book Nation by Bradford WrightĬomic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America

Bradford wright comic book nation