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nonfiction -- footnotes
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From: SendtoJMA at aol.com <SendtoJMA>
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 10:48:08 EDT
When I wrote Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World it never crossed my mind that I should use footnotes, and was taken aback when one reviewer faulted it for not having any. I make a distinction between scholarly nonfiction in which you would expect footnotes or endnotes and a citation for every direct quote, and popular nonfiction, in which you would not necessarily expect it. You find this in adult nonfiction, certainly. Of course I included a bibliography, so that anyone could read those same books and find the same information I did.
It does mean that the reader must take it as a matter of faith that the author is not making stuff up, because who really wants to read all the source material just to find out if Event A happened exactly as the author described it? When I write nonfiction I go on the assumption that someone out there is likely to know as much if not (certainly) more than I do, and catch my mistakes or misrepresentations. When another book on Shackleton and the Endurance was published shortly after mine, the Horn Book reviewer discovered a discrepancy in the attribution of a famous quotation about Shackleton between that book and mine, called my editor, and asked me to prove that I had it correct. (Thank the heavens above I could.) Endnotes would not have proven the case, because the other author could have propertly cited her source. As it happens, her source was wrong.
So I'm not sure that footnotes or endnotes are to be relied upon any more than the text alone is. I've done a whooooole lot of historical research, and I cannot tell you how many times I have found direct contradictions in books that were stuffed with notes.
Jennifer Armstrong
Received on Sun 07 Apr 2002 09:48:08 AM CDT
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 10:48:08 EDT
When I wrote Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World it never crossed my mind that I should use footnotes, and was taken aback when one reviewer faulted it for not having any. I make a distinction between scholarly nonfiction in which you would expect footnotes or endnotes and a citation for every direct quote, and popular nonfiction, in which you would not necessarily expect it. You find this in adult nonfiction, certainly. Of course I included a bibliography, so that anyone could read those same books and find the same information I did.
It does mean that the reader must take it as a matter of faith that the author is not making stuff up, because who really wants to read all the source material just to find out if Event A happened exactly as the author described it? When I write nonfiction I go on the assumption that someone out there is likely to know as much if not (certainly) more than I do, and catch my mistakes or misrepresentations. When another book on Shackleton and the Endurance was published shortly after mine, the Horn Book reviewer discovered a discrepancy in the attribution of a famous quotation about Shackleton between that book and mine, called my editor, and asked me to prove that I had it correct. (Thank the heavens above I could.) Endnotes would not have proven the case, because the other author could have propertly cited her source. As it happens, her source was wrong.
So I'm not sure that footnotes or endnotes are to be relied upon any more than the text alone is. I've done a whooooole lot of historical research, and I cannot tell you how many times I have found direct contradictions in books that were stuffed with notes.
Jennifer Armstrong
Received on Sun 07 Apr 2002 09:48:08 AM CDT
