I agree with Mary Ellen Kerans that this is an important consideration as
regards footnotes. What is the nature of the discipline? What are the
general preferences of its members? I have been editing/proofreading
articles in historical linguistics recently where, depending on the page,
footnote volume is occasionally greater than the body itself.
Best
Thomas
Thomas Williams
Assistant Professor
Dept. of English Language Teacher Education
and Applied Linguistics
University of Szeged
Hungary
At 13:19 19/02/2010 +0100, you wrote:
>My experience (with teaching writing in different disciplines at
>postgraduate level, editing for authors in different disciplines,
>translating for some of them too) is that the use of footnotes or not is
>extremely discipline-sensitive.
>
>Historians do it.
>Scientists, even soft or applied ones, don't.
>I haven't done anything in literary criticism in many years, but in the old
>days, lit crit genres also made use of footnotes.
>
>Does anyone have experience with other disciplines?
>
>
>- Mary Ellen Kerans
>Barcelona
>
> ----Mensaje original----
>De: [log in to unmask]
>Fecha: 19/02/2010 12:54
><>
>Asunto: On footnotes
>
>Dear Russ,
>
>I think most style guides for English would concur with your assessment on
>footnotes being a bad thing. I was in fact asked to revise an article for a
>US journal recently, and was asked to eliminate footnotes. As the
>information in the footnotes was mostly essential but peripheral to the
>argument, I ended up putting it in brackets in the text, which seemed to me
>a less than elegant solution.
>
>It would be interesting to hear from EATAW members who write and/or teach
>writing in other languages whether this trend against footnotes is common
>across European languages (or indeed beyond).
>
>Best,
>
>John
>>>><>>>>
>...
>
> Personally, I
> If the comment is not
>worth putting in the actual text, why bother?
>
>Regards,
>
>Russ Kent
>
>
>
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