My love affair with the footnote

If you’ve been reading Scientist Sees Squirrel for a while, or if you’ve read The Scientist’s Guide to Writing, you’ll have noticed my tendency to footnote. Footnotes drive some folks up the wall; others love them. You can tell that I’m in the latter camp – but why?

I guess there are two ways to answer that question: historically and functionally.

Historically: I’ve always loved weird digressions and unexpected connections – things that might not quite be germane to the main point, but are interesting or surprising or funny. If you’re of a vintage similar to mine, you might remember James Burke’s documentary series for the BBC, Connections, which made the apparent digressions the whole point in tracing the history of science. Not that Connections had footnotes, exactly – I’m not sure what a TV footnote looks like – but it had plenty of going where you didn’t quite think you were going. More recently, Steven Johnson’s How We Got To Now revels in the same kind of nonlinearity. And for more strictly comic purposes, if you’ve read the novels of Terry Pratchett, you’ve seen footnotes used by a master. I love Terry Pratchett’s footnotes.*

Functionally: as I use them, footnotes represent a solution to a conflict between two of a writer’s most important goals. As a writer, I want my work to be engaging; and I also want my writing to be clear and easy to read. A digression, an aside, an unexpected connection, or a witticism can be a powerful tool for engaging a reader – but risks complicating that reader’s job by interrupting an otherwise simple, linear flow of information. A compromise: provide the digression, but signal clearly that it’s optional and not part of the main argument. Footnotes do this well.** If you’re one of those readers who hates footnotes, you can easily ignore them without fear of losing the main message. If you’re a reader like me who loves them, they’re there for you – and you get clear signposting of where the digressions lie, and how to return from them to the central argument.***

When I wrote The Scientist’s Guide to Writing, my first draft was absolutely festooned with footnotes. Even I knew it was too much, so I cut about half of them out. During the review process, the editorial team pressured me to cut out about half of what remained (footnotes do complicate printing, it’s true). I was bowed, but not broken. The second edition, published last spring, has some substantial additions and improvements; it also has more footnotes. Depending what side of the fence you’re on, you’re welcome; or, I’m sorry.

 © Stephen Heard  February 8, 2023

 Image: one of my favourite footnotes, from The Scientist’s Guide to Writing (2^nd ed, © Princeton University Press). If you are now picturing Agatha Christie (or Alan Greenspan) naked, I apologize. Or, I would, if I was actually sorry.

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*^If you haven’t read Pratchett: it’s time to fix that. What most people are talking about, when they bring up Pratchett, is his Discworld fantasy series. I recommend starting here, or here, or here. His collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, is also brilliant.

**^For more academic footnotes, there’s a similar conflict between providing detailed information that only a few readers will really want, while making the text simple and readable for the majority of readers. My forthcoming book on teaching and mentoring writing will use footnotes for this purpose. Well, unless somebody stops me, some of them will probably be amusing too.

***^Although at risk of losing other opportunities. If you read The Scientist’s Guide to Writing but skip the footnotes, you risk going through life not knowing who won the only Grammy ever awarded in the “Best Disco Song” category – among other things. And who would want to go through life that way?

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