
Usability of Footnotes - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/07/usability-of-footnotes/
======
sixstringtheory
Before even clicking through to the article I was thinking about Infinite
Jest.

> As an author, I want to add more details which don’t fit in the main body of
> the text. Because I hate deleting text and my editor told me to take it out.

I joked about IJ doing that exact thing, that the editor was all “no, you
can’t just list nonsensical film titles for four straight pages” and DFW said
“watch this.”

Of course it’s us poor readers that pay the price having to use two bookmarks
(or three, as some footnotes have footnotes). And there was plenty of this:

> the user is forced to break from the flow of reading

I’ve never had to reread so many passages. If you take it all in stride it’s
quite fun, really. I found it humorous and chuckled each time I had to skip to
the back, like I was privy to an inside joke.

The article does raise good points, and I’ve never used an e-reader. I bet it
helps a ton, I imagine something like the pop up doc/diff/def viewers like in
a modern source code editor. I imagine it would’ve taken away some of the fun
from IJ, but of course that’s not a typical case.

~~~
codetrotter
I tried to read Infinite Jest once but eventually gave up because I found it
kind of exhausting to read and I couldn’t really follow along.

After reading your comment I decided to have another look at it. I knew last
time that it was a weird book, and that it was enjoyed by a lot of people. But
even looking at the first page of it again I just don’t feel compelled to read
it. Maybe some day.

~~~
1MachineElf
There's a decent audiobook too, if that helps.

~~~
thedanbob
As someone who has done a little work on the side recording audiobooks, I hope
they paid that guy well. That sounds like a nightmare.

~~~
sixstringtheory
How do you handle footnotes in audiobooks?

~~~
thedanbob
I was told to read them right after the sentence in which they appear. It
sucks when there's one in the middle of a sentence or multiple in one
sentence, really breaks the flow of the thought. On the other hand, I can't
think of a better way to handle them without omitting them entirely.

There's a few things like that which have really made me realize how _visual_
books are, and how challenging they are to translate to the spoken word
(simple example, imagine how to express with your tone of voice that this is a
parenthetical rather than a new sentence).

------
just-ok
Footnotes are great when done right.

If you're using footnotes to cite things, you're doing it wrong: inline
citations exist. If that's not enough for you, use a different syntax (say,
^[1] instead of ^1). If you're using it to define terms, you're doing it
wrong: use a margin note. If that's not enough, you should probably typeset a
nice box that makes definitions easy to identify. Footnotes (imo, of course)
should _only_ be used as a "here's more information for the curious" and
should similarly only appear at the actual foot of a page (I _despise_
endnotes).

My experience is biased towards print and print-like (PDF) use of footnotes,
but I don't think it's much of a problem to expect users to click every
footnote when provided with a convenient pop-up UI like in the OP, provided
that you've clearly defined a convention or pattern of their usage to your
readers.

I do wish websites showed footnotes on hover, though... jumping within the
page is nonsense and often mucks with URL sharing.

~~~
dredmorbius
IMO inline cites are the worst of all possible worlds: they butcher the text
but don't provide enough information to resolve the citation and require
another two levels of lookup (brief-ref mapping, referenced work) to resolve
the reference.

Either just name the damned work already in the text ("as Smith writes in
_Academic Observations_ (1972) ..."), or use a numbered note and cite the work
fully or partially. Any decent bibliographic tool (LaTeX + BibTex) can handle
long vs. short cites, and your reader will thank you. For any sufficient
volume of references, footnotes are the only sensible tool.

There's also the silent notes form (unsure of the proper name) common in
serious-but-nonacademic works --- no indictation in the main text but page-
referenced notes with anchoring context. This solves one problem (interrupting
the main text), but introduces another (failing to _sufficiently_ notice
additional references or comments).

~~~
rocqua
Personally, I like my citations short and meaningful. Easy to skip over, but
also easy to resolve if I care. That means something like [Aut19] where Aut is
some contraction of the author names, and 19 reffers to the year of
publication.

My issue with simpler citations like [13] is that it is hard to figure out
whether two citations are to the same book. "Was [13] that reference to the
horrible tome of complete mathematics, or was that [14]" "Was [15] the paper
this is trying to generalize?". By creating a small amount of meaning, it
becomes much easier to remember the actual reference.

My issue with longer citations, is that I generally don't care about the
source of a statement. When I am trying to follow an argument, I will just
take the statement as fact, and focus on the big picture. Only when the fact
is surprising, or when I have gotten the big picture, will I care about the
reference. By having full inline citations in the argument, the text of the
argument gets very bloated. Making it much harder to get the high level point
of the argument.

I can imagine this is a feature of very technical, close to mathematical
proofs, kind of texts. For other fields, maybe this matter much less.
Especially when 'truth' is a lot less objective, knowing the source of a
statement becomes more important I guess.

------
nsmog767
One of the best uses of footnotes is in _Softwar_ , the book on Ellison &
Oracle. There, footnotes are an entertaining editorial compromise: the author
refused to give up final approval, but he gave Ellison the right to respond
within the book.

Ellison will either expand on - or contradict - the author's points. Easily
the most appropriate and defensible use of footnotes I've ever encountered.

Link to book:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AK78QVI/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AK78QVI/)

~~~
impendia
I skimmed through part of it and found this gem in a footnote:

"LE writes: Gardens last for hundreds of years, companies don't. That's
because people love and take care of gardens."

------
dredmorbius
_...There have been many attempts to get a <footnote> element into HTML..._

HTML is now well into its 2nd quarter century, grew from academic origins, and
yet still lacks a <footnote> or <note> element and standard presentation(s).¹
I've not followed developments at all closely, references here are based on
current DDG searches, bit so far as I'm aware, the situation's not improved
and has arguable regressed.

Suggestions to use <cite> fail as not all footnotes are citations. Using
<aside> overloads the element, creates ambiguities as to usage, and leaves us
with nonstandard footnote mechanisms.

There was a 2003 proposal for a <referral> tag which seems ... excessively
Byzantine.²

David MacDonald's <note> element proposal seems to cover most of the features
(and objections) I'd anticipate.³

I'd consider footnotes (bottom of current page), endnotes (end of document or
section/chaper/article), sidenotes (margin adjacent to text), inline notes
(parenthetical communts, such aas this), or pop-up dialogues to be for the
most part implementation details of an underlying notes element. An author
might specify a default presentation, but the reader or device / media
properties could override this in all cases to suit needs, limitations, or
preference.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. HTML3 had the <FN> element, long since abandoned:
[https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/footnotes.html](https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/footnotes.html)

2\. [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-
style/2003May/att-0...](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-
style/2003May/att-0050/proposal.draft.html)

3\.
[https://www.davidmacd.com/blog/html51-footnotes.html](https://www.davidmacd.com/blog/html51-footnotes.html)
See also [http://spec-ops.github.io/html-note/index.html](http://spec-
ops.github.io/html-note/index.html)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Does footnote (bottom of current page) in html mean bottom of viewport or
bottom of webpage that when printed out can take 4-5 pages. If bottom of
webpage what is footnote if infinite scroll.

In the MDN example for cite it is inside of a footer element
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ci...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/cite)

I believe a combination of aside, cite, and footer can achieve most of what is
wanted - at any rate the main problem is that footnote is a concept arising
from printed works and perhaps not directly transferable to the infinite
canvas that HTML in the browser represents.

on edit: minor clarification.

~~~
dredmorbius
"Footer" is a page/section element, not an in-text document relation.
Footnotes are document or article relations, similar to sections or figures.
The refer between the main text and supplemental material, with enumeration.

Again, how the note itself is presented should be definable by the
author/publisher, media, device, or user, ranked from least to greatest
priority.

Whilst infinite scroll is a misfeature, most such designs are based around
subunits, usually articles. Notes at the end of an article, much as they
typically appear in printed anthologies, encyclopedias, and collections, would
seem a fairly obvious choice.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
>"Footer" is a page/section element, not an in-text document relation.
Footnotes are document or article relations, similar to sections or figures.
The refer between the main text and supplemental material, with enumeration

Most words have more than one meaning - the one you give for footnote is
certainly one meaning of footnote, however if I go to
[https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/footnote](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/footnote)
it says "a note printed at the bottom of a page that gives extra information
about something that has been written on that page" which I actually think is
the commonly understood meaning.

This would also explain the strong relation between the words Footer and
Footnote.

The Footnote was invented in a particular media, it was presented in a
particular way that was suitable to that media. My main point is that there
has not been an obvious way to translate between how it is used in that media
to how it should be used in the browser, and therefore attempts to make a
footnote element specification have met with lackluster response at best.

~~~
dredmorbius
_The <footer> element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning
content or sectioning root element._

 _A footer typically contains information about its section: author, links to
related documents, copyright data, etc._

[https://www.w3.org/html/wiki/Elements/footer](https://www.w3.org/html/wiki/Elements/footer)

A <footer> element is one possible container for a <note>. It is not the note
itself, need not contain _any_ notes, nor need notes appear in footers.

The mapping is both inaccurate and ambiguous.

------
MengerSponge
Tufte's footnotes are my favorite. They're especially brilliant when you have
typeset documents on 8.5x11" paper, because you wind up with huge margins if
you're using a humane line length for your main text.

[https://www.overleaf.com/articles/implementing-the-
teachings...](https://www.overleaf.com/articles/implementing-the-teachings-of-
edward-tufte/hvtnngcxqnwm)

~~~
User23
Tufte is underappreciated for sure. He's often aped, but rarely do I see his
ideas actually applied as he teaches them. The whole point is a theory and
practice of communication. Before he gave up and decided to just focus on
sculpture he was almost to the point of actually developing a solid theory of
representing 5-6 dimensional information representation in 2space. Of course I
understand why he gave up, because 3space is way more interesting when you've
solved the 2space problem to your own satisfaction.

------
quadrifoliate
From the article:

> But I want to talk about the cognitive issues at play. When footnotes can
> contain anything from a citation to essential background information, the
> user is forced to break from the flow8 of reading – often in the middle of a
> sentence. This is a problem in both paper books and electronic books.

I think this is...the idea of footnotes? That you _don 't_ break the flow and
it's safe to skip over them, but if you're coming back for a leisurely read
later, you can look them up and see what you missed. [1] When you go over the
text a second time, you can follow the references to the footnotes and see the
interesting crumbs that the author laid out, which often lead to a train of
thought separate from the main flow of words.

\------------

[1] At least, this is how I have used footnotes for a while when reading, and
it works quite well. YMMV, since people read and comprehend differently.

~~~
edent
I think my confusion is about how to read the footnotes which are more than
just citations. If I read them "inline" then I don't understand why they're
not part of the main text. If I wait until the end of the chapter, I've lost
context.

I'm prepared to believe that I haven't been taught to read in the right way.
But there seems to be some disagreement on what the right way is.

------
hardwaregeek
I find footnotes annoying even in print books. When I'm reading a book, I have
to figure out if the book is the type that uses footnotes as citations or the
type that uses it as actual content. Or worse, the type that does both. If
it's the type that uses them as citations, then meh, I can skip over them. If
it's the type that uses them as content, well ugh now I need to read this
footnote and then get back to the original text, which is a context switch.
Even worse if the footnotes are actually endnotes because then I need to
physically flip the pages. Even worse if the endnotes are gigantic and have
subnotes ( _cough_ Infinite Jest).

If it's the type that does both then I have to look at every damn footnote
only to be disappointed by a "Pfaffenberger, 2016" 90% of the time.

I don't have a good answer to these problems. Tufte style is better because I
don't have to move my eyes that much. But there's only so much one can put in
a note in the margin. And it still distracts.

~~~
User23
I like endnotes best. For a book where they are actually useful I either
unbind or buy two copies so I can lay out the endnotes side by side with the
book. Think of it like having two monitors where one is the working screen and
the other is the reference screen.

~~~
JadeNB
Wouldn't it be more useful not to have to do this? Keeping them footnotes
saves buying another copy, or damaging yours.

~~~
User23
Think of it as the difference between having two monitors and having one
monitor where the bottom 1/8th to 1/2 randomly gets hijacked. Two monitors are
also more expensive. My method has its trade-offs as you note, but I find
having an uninterrupted flow through the main text while having access to the
notes on an as desired basis works best for my enjoyment and comprehension.
Without my method endnotes are so frustrating I almost never use them, and
about half the time when I think ok this time it's worth it to context switch,
it turns out not to be.

This all comes down to Tufte's idea of letting the optic nerve do the work. A
glance requires almost no conscious brainpower, this is why thumbing through a
book you've read works so well. Thus I can glance over at the footnotes pages
and decide if I care to read the note without even slightly interrupting my
flow reading the main text.

------
WorldMaker
> How does the user know whether the footnote is a citation or is explanatory?

Used to be that was one of the distinctions between footnotes and end notes.
This is an affordance where that lost distinction in ebooks is most felt, I
think.

An equally old practice, however, is to use different marks for footnotes
versus end notes, and that's something I've felt could be readopted in a
digital context. In particular the asterisk, dagger, double dagger, very rare
triple dagger symbology was used for foot notes only (as there are only a few
such symbols, versus numerals, and they can't be "document global").

In a medium with hyperlinks, symbol uniqueness is less of a problem so
asterisks for all footnotes and numbers for end notes is possible.

Similarly, we aren't as limited typographically with what metal we have
available in ebooks, we could enlist a much wider variety of symbols (emoji
notes, perhaps?), or even pair symbols and numbers.

Perhaps the biggest thing holding us back right now is that publishers want to
use the same design tools for both print and ebook (for good reason), but
ideas like increasing symbol variety or pairing symbols and numbers are both
reasonable options to make it to print as well if they need to be kept close
in similarity for ease of production.

------
bschne
I personally like the approach that Gwern takes (e.g. [1]), which works fairly
well on screens where you have a lot more horizontal space than needed for the
main body of text (it's beneficial to keep the text somewhat narrow anyway,
since lines that are too long become harder to scan/read).

It seems to be somewhat similar to what Edward Tufte does in his books, which
is also putting the footnotes in the margins close to where they are brought
up, and often even interrupting the current line for an additional note or
image at the point of reference.

1\. [https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3)

~~~
gwern
More info: [https://www.gwern.net/Sidenotes](https://www.gwern.net/Sidenotes)

------
zeveb
Footnotes are great! There's something wonderful about the affordance of a
digressive paragraph at the foot of the page. I do not need to break the flow
of reading, just flick my eyes down, read and return to the body text. What
are terrible are _endnotes_ , which force one to page or click back and forth.
That action breaks flow.

I wonder if the issue is with how footnotes are displayed electronically?
Perhaps a Sufficiently Smart E-Reader could display a footnote as long as its
footnote marker, sentence, line or paragraph (would need research to see which
is best, I think) is on-screen.

------
rocqua
I have often used footnotes in my own reading. For things I want in the text
for completeness, but do not consider essential to the story.

However, thinking about it, they are completely nonfunctional for me when
reading. Unless I am skimming a text, I will immediately look up any foot-note
I come across. I suppose that, if it is a quick explanation of something I
already know, or don't care about, it is easier to skip the footnote in full.
Whereas an in-line explanation is harder to skip because it is part of the
text.

------
r34
The worst thing ever is end-book-notes (or end-chapter ones) in a paper book.
I have the habit of "precise reading", e.g. I usually read books from first to
last page without skipping information. The "end-notes rich" books are the
worst reading experience for me (bottom page foot-notes are OK).

When I write text I quite often use footnotes - they are special for the
organisation of the text, adding kind of additional dimensions to the main
narration.

I don't (or very rarely) use ebooks, so hard to tell.

------
rimliu
The worst case I had to deal with was when reading _War and Peace_ by Leo
Tolstoy. I can read Russian, that's not a problem. The problem is that about
20% is in French which I cannot read, and translation was given as footnotes.
So annoying.

------
maaark
I can't believe he wrote a whole article on the usability of footnotes, using
footnotes, on a site without links to return from the footnote back to where
it was used.

~~~
edent
I'm being deliberately ironic to help underscore how usability issues affect
footnotes.

------
jeremiahlee
Nice to see Coil icon light up. The author just earned $0.02 from me because
of their Web Monetization tag.

