17 Nov 2011, 9:32 pm
Lots of books have footnotes. You sometimes need to make a note about something outside of the text so you don't interrupt the flow of the writing. The footnotes are usually the main point of interest in annotated editions. Most sane book publishers put their footnotes at the bottom of the page, like this:
Or if you're W. W. Norton, you publish books like The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, The New Annotated Dracula, and The Annotated Alice with footnotes on outside columns, like this:
Both of these methods work fine (despite my crude MS Paint drawings making them look quite ugly). But then we have the unholy hell of footnotes, giving them their own section at the back of the book, like this:
Maybe I've just been spoiled by modern computer convenience, but it's an enormous pain in the ass to have to continually mark my place, flip to the back of the book to find the footnote and read it, then flip back to the text and continue reading.
I love the Library of America books with their cloth-bound hard covers, their stitched binding, and their acid-free thin Bible paper, but I want to send the company a shoebox filled with the contents of my cat's litter box for all the pain they've caused in making me flip to the back of the book to get to the footnotes. Which, by the way, are not even marked in the text, so the footnotes themselves are marked to tell you what line of the book they're referring to. What utter horses**t. I think they have a note scribbled somewhere about how they keep the footnotes in the back to keep the text clean, but seriously, who would ever complain?
And they're certainly not the only ones who do this. Book after book after book on my shelf has pissed me off this way. Unlike the Library of America books, most of them at least have the words marked with numbers so you know there's a footnote in the back, but you still have to bend over backwards to get to it. If I need to have Post-It notes sticking out of my book to mark the footnote areas, then you have failed in your duties as a publisher.
End rant.
