The New York Times essay “Will the E-Book Kill the Footnote?” discusses how many e-books turn footnotes into endnotes, which may or may not be hyperlinked. Author Alexandra Horowitz laments, “Few of these will be read, to be sure.” She also tells a story about how the footnotes being separated from the text of her book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know led to a misunderstanding with e-book readers about her actions, which resulted in her receiving some surly e-mails.
She worries that reading will become too linear, with no room for meandering:
Should footnotes fully disappear, I would grieve their loss. I do not find it disagreeable to bend my nose south and find further information where it lands. Surely the purpose of a book is not to present a methodically linear narrative, never wavering from its course, with no superfluous commentary set off by commas. In my mind, footnotes are simply another punctuative style: a subspecies of parenthesis that tells the reader: “I’ve got something else here you might like! (Read it later.)” What better thing? You get to follow the slipstreams in the author’s thinking at your own leisure.
This is a little silly, because she’s describing precisely the way most web-pages read now.
I would be more likely to read hyperlinked endnotes on an e-reader than I would to read endnotes in an actual book. And probably just as likely to read hyperlinked endnotes as footnotes in an actual book.
Given how much time I’ve lost following link after link after link on TVTropes, I don’t think she has much to worry about.
I rarely read footnotes or endnotes. I also rarely read headings and titles. I’m not sure why I do that though… just habit I suppose.
Inside of a dog, of course, it’s too dark to read—so the backlit e-reader has a leg up, so to speak. Woof!
@2: “I would be more likely to read hyperlinked endnotes on an e-reader than I would to read endnotes in an actual book.”
Yes, how has she never encountered Wikipedia?
@3: I don’t think her books are about magical schoolgirls with big knockers, though.
I don’t read footnotes. (1)
(1)But you do.
This would make me unable to purchase a single Terry Pratchett novel for e-reader. He uses them as a humorous device, with footnotes occasionally requiring additional footnotes of their own, and some that may be several paragraphs long (enough to bleed onto a facing page…).
Can these e-book readers handle truly hyperlinked books? Books that are a labyrinthine tangle of hyperlinks to other points within the book itself? Has anyone else written hyperlinked poetry yet?
Because hyperlinked text doesn’t let you meander.
OMG
Obviously they should always be hyperlinked. I’m reading Sex at Dawn on the kindle right now (free from the library) and it has both footnotes and endnotes, all hyperlinked. The footnotes are slower to get to, since you have to cursor to the spot and then click, compared to a paper book where you just glance down. But the endnotes are faster than in a paper book, because you don’t have to dig through the back. Overall it’s a pretty good solution. But it would be better if they could make the footnotes show up on the bottom of the screen so you don’t have to click through.
Hyperlinks will be an improvement, especially in an e-reader that links to the Internet. Sometimes footnotes are nothing more than references to a section of another written work. It would be nice to be able to follow the link to the chapter/line/verse.
I would also like to add that in many kinds of writing in-line citation has long been the norm already (e.g., MLA style). If the Chicago Manual of Style develops XML standards to go with its other style standards intended for the preparation of e-books, it will be easy enough for future e-book readers to deal with whatever footnote/endnote/hypertext solution CMS or whatever other style guide may prefer. (To me the obvious solution is a little popup window with the extra “meandering” text, like when you hover over a Word comment now or when you hover over a news link on certain Web pages and a the destination text pops up without having to actually click through.)
I get the feeling this writer/reader actually has no awareness of what digital solutions have been out there in the wild for fifteen years now, already. It’s like she’s moving from Gutenberg Bible presses to e-books and missing a few things that happened in the late 1990s.
Did anyone actually READ the article? She talks about hyperlinking and its similarities/dissimilarities to what she likes about footnotes.
Obv. that was directed to the commenters up above #13.
I <3 me some foot notes. I always loose my place when I have to flip to the back of the book to check out the note. But it’d be great if I could click on the inline citation (ex: [1]) and be taken to the end note, and then with a push of a button be taken back to my spot in the book. But I don’t have an e-reader anyway.
I’d love hyperlinked endnotes (AND INDEXES PLEASE) but so far very few publishers have shown any interest in adding these to their ebooks, which are just straight file conversions from whatever they printed the book from, often with typical errors included (hyphenation rendered mid-line, etc.)
Implementing links from the bibliography to an online bookseller page would be terrific too. That’s how I find half my new reading, doing it manually.
@13, I love your hover-over solution for end-notes. I’d start reading e-books again if that was a regular feature.
This is easy. When creating e-books, encode footnotes as footnotes and endnotes as endnotes. Stylesheets for pdf/print versions can put footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page, while stylesheets for epub/mobi/etc… ebooks can include them as hyperlinks, hoverovers or whatever else clever e-reader developers can come up with.
Footnotes still exist. The issue is unsophisticated ebook publishing workflows.
@13 That was my first thought, too. There’s no reason any e-reader shouldn’t be able to display footnotes/endnotes “above” the text if clicked (floatnotes?). XKCD has been doing this for years 🙂
@18 – Does the epub standard encode for foot- and end-notes? I haven’t come across any readers that bother to do anything with it, if it’s there.
I’m genuinely just curious whether the failure is with the standard, or the current suite of readers.