Re: women in references, footnotes and endnotes, warning

John St. Julien (stjulien who-is-at UDel.Edu)
Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:08:44 -0400

A quick note on footnoting.

The use of full names-not all styles eschew the use of full names and their
indications of gender. But psychology does, and education generally follows
psych in this as in other ways. Other social science, history in
particular, do not follow this style. I fought to have my dissertation
accepted in a Chicago style in part for the two reasons discussed
here-footnotes and full names. (I also wanted a style which didn't interupt
the text with dates and proper names and which had clear standards for
content notes.)

As a community don't have to use APA if we don't like it. And there are
good reasons not to.

The endnotes issue-I strongly suspect that the footnotes/endnotes issue is
a consequence of historical changes in the publishing industry. Old style
books were handset and proudly handcrafted. Setting footnotes was a part of
the craft and making them work a skill that defined good typesetting in an
industrial craft situation. With the advent of photo typsetting large reams
of body text were quickly produced and justified automatically. You would
develop a whole cannister (many linear feet) of typeset body copy. It was a
lot cheaper to eliminate the skilled typsetter and paste up revealingly
named 'mechanicals.' Getting footnotes to work was a lot harder if you body
copy was essentially unadjustable; and it was inordinately expensive in
that context. This, I think, is the source of the new tradition of
endnotes.

But we don't have to accept this either, especially since the economic
reason has disappeared. Any publisher worth their salt has adopted
postscript-based imagesetting-a process in which the whole page is
described as a unit. All modern programs (among them PageMaker and Quark)
make qualtiy footnotes as easy as running text. The publisher pays nothing
extra to push that button in the document defaults before outputting the
file.

I suspect that if an intellectual community valued these things, knew they
were fairly easy to get it, and pushed for it that conventions would change
with as much ease as traditions ever do.

No doubt preaching to the choir (and perhaps the uninterested),

John St. Julien

>For a class, I was recently reading some essays in "The Identity in
>Question" and what stood out for me was the use of references. First,
>endnotes were used more often than references to cite another author. So
>in that sense it was not so much of acknowledging the "knowledge" that came
>before you, but describing the broader context of the citation. The second
>thing that stood out for me was the use of the whole name which made
>explicit as least in regard to gender who was male and female.
>
>Even in social-science literature this use of referencing is very rare. I
>am aware there are various standards for publication, but was curious of
>personal experiences of challenges to these various standards or is no
>challenge possible. I am aware of the political reasons for certain
>dominant standards of writing, but am curious/perplexed why those standards
>themselves are not more controversial or explicitly attacked.
>
>I personally like footnotes as compared to endnotes because they help
>clarify or encourage a dialogue between writer and reader, but again
>endnotes seem to be the more dominant practice. An assumption that if it
>has no direct relation to the text or argument that it should be at the end
>rather than a part of the paper. Again, I would be curious as to the
>consequences of challenging the dominant standards of writing.
>
>Nate

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John St. Julien (stjulien who-is-at udel.edu)
School of Education
University of Delaware