Blogwatch: RogueClassicism on Sidenotes

In RogueClassicism, David Meadows weighs in on the discussion about footnotes and sidenotes and suggests that perhaps sidenotes are the way to go for print publications too, the only difficulty being how one would deal with the "monster footnote". I agree with David's suggestion that academics should try harder to trim footnotes to matters of substance. There is a joy in the elegant, focused academic footnote, but all too often there is a sloppiness that uses the footnote as a general dumping ground for material that the author cannot make up his/her mind on. Good editorial input from publishers can help here. Trinity Press International made many suggestions for trimming footnotes in my Case Against Q, sometimes suggesting deletion, sometimes suggesting moving to the body of the text and sometimes suggesting trimming. And the book was much better for it.