The War on Footnotes

by Rebecca Bynum

Lately I’ve noticed that publishers seem to be waging a war on footnotes. A few years ago, footnotes were moved to the end of the chapter and now many publishers are moving them all to the end of the book – out of sight and out of mind. Why? Are publishers afraid that footnotes will put people off somehow? 

Footnotes are essential to a scholarly work and add an entire dimension of their own with additional, often very interesting, information that helps to illuminate the text. When footnotes are hidden from the reader, the reader loses that extra dimension and it makes it very hard to gauge the scholarship of the work without easy access to the footnotes. Publishers used to understand this. What is going on?

New English Review Press will never surrender! Our footnotes are displayed proudly at the bottom of the page. We will never dumb down our books. Not now. Not ever.

Footnotes forever!