Footnotes or Endnotes?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kate Steere on October 8, 2009 at 5:21am

I would prefer endnotes. :)

Permalink Reply by Bill Bienia on October 8, 2009 at 6:31am

I personally prefer footnotes, because I like the opportunity to study the sources in the context of narrative story. The real question should be, "What will my audience prefer?" If your audience are expecting a good story and care little or nothing about your sources, then endnotes may be the better choice. However, if you are writing the work for an audience who will be interested in where you found each particular tidbit of information, you would want to consider footnotes. Another consideration is that if someone will want to photocopy a page from your work, if you use footnotes, the footnotes will generally be on the same page as the text. Analyze your audience before making your decision.

If you use the same endnote for multiple people, (census, immigration, residence, marriages, divorces, etc.), it may not be practical to group endnotes by the person. If I had to flip back and forth between the text and the endnotes, I would want to keep my finger in the last place I looked expecting to find the next endnote in the same place.

Endnotes and Footnotes should also be in the consecutive order found in the text. If you can find a copy of _The Chicago Manual of Style_ or Elizabeth Shown Mills' _Evidence Explained_, they will provide more details on this.

Permalink Reply by GeneJ on October 8, 2009 at 11:27am

Hi Michelle, Kate and Bill:

You wrote, "I am writing up my notes into something that I can print out and share."

I create/share research memorandum and detailed family group sheets. Have also worked with traditional family group narratives (biographies) in both Register or NGS-Quarterly style.

Research Memorandum:
In a research memorandum, I'm often writing _about_ source information, so citations are part of the body of the work. Ditto, when writing about more than one family or family line, the material is frequently organize into different headings/subheadings. While citations are interspersed [inline citations], I really like the idea of concluding each heading with a "Bibliography" or "Source List" identifying all the sources used for that heading/subheading.

As a user, if I had to choose between having the bibliography or having footnotes/endnotes, I'd go with the bibliography; I can scan a bibliography quickly to identify sources I haven’t used and spot missing sources.

Best practices suggest the bibliography should be organized by authors name (last, first). See any edition of Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained for "Source List," including templates and examples.

P.S. Even for quick communications, consider concluding with a list of “Select Sources,” of “List of Key Sources.”

Detailed Family Group Sheets
So prefer endnotes with Family Group Sheets. In my experience, even for _lengthy_ Family Group Sheets, users tend to keep the pages together; less often might one end up with “orphaned” references (pages with text and citation references …. without the pages that contain the citations to which the references refer). When citations are well done, readers can run their finger down the list of citations to quickly identify sources that are new or spot missing entries.

Traditional Narratives
For traditional family group narratives/family histories, consider, especially for lengthy works, readers often "clip/copy and share” only a page here or a page there. If you use footnotes (rather than endnotes), your citations are more likely to be shared as part of the associated text; endnotes are sometimes not copied, leaving some readers with orphaned references. If you are writing an article for a genealogical journal, the whole may be divided into several sections, each published in a different volume or number of the journal—one more reason some authors and editors prefer footnotes.

For more discussion, as Bill mentioned, see any edition of Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained and sources that follow this note. Hope this helps --GJ


Board for Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual (Orem, Utah: Ancestry Publishing, 2000).

Michael Leclerc and Henry Hoff, editors, Genealogical Writing in the 21st Century: A Guide to Register Style and More, 2nd ed. (Boston, Mass.: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2006).

Helen Schatvet Ullmann, “Writing a family sketch in Register Style,” New England Ancestors 8 (Summer 2007):41‐42, 45, also available from the New England Historic Genealogical Society website, http://www.NewEnglandAncestors.org .

Joan F. Curran, Madilyn C. Crane, and John H. Wray, authors, edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills, Numbering Your Genealogy: Basic Systems, Complex Families, and International Kin, rev. ed. (Washington: NGS, 2008).

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Shaw on October 8, 2009 at 2:23pm

I prefer footnotes, since the information is right there, however I understand that most people (who never look at them) don't like them since they seem "unnecessary" and clutter the page.

End notes are numbered the same was as footnotes. If you are using a word processor, be aware that it will re-number your in-text numbers if you put the end notes out of number order. You can include a works cited (bibliography) page, broken down by the name of the person referenced.

Permalink Reply by Sarah Coles on October 22, 2009 at 5:06pm

I just received the following from the NEGHS in my newsletter which I thought would be of interest in this discussion. I guess it's all personal preference but I don't think I would like to read a narrative, even though it's a genealogical history, that would have footnotes on every page. I find it disrupts my reading and also feel that anyone reading some historical account in narrative form would feel the same way. If it were just a factual genealogica history then I guess the following excerpt is considered the "right way" of doing it if there is such a thing.

Excerpt from this week's NEGHS newsletter.

Research Recommendations: Genealogical Writing: Footnotes vs. Endnotes
by Michael J. Leclerc

When writing your family history, documenting your sources is of critical importance. For many beginning authors, the question is whether to use footnotes or endnotes for your work. While historical works generally use endnotes, those writing for genealogists are usually better served with footnotes. Why is this?

* Footnotes allow readers to read the notes without losing your place in the text. Readers do not have to flip pages back and forth; the eye can shift to the bottom of the page and back up.
* Notes for genealogies often include explanatory text in addition to the source citation. This is more easily read with ready access to the original text above.
* When copying sections of compiled genealogies, footnote at the bottom of the page will be included. Endnotes might be lost if the user forgets to copy and include them as well.

In times past some genealogists used embedded notes, set off by square brackets within the text. Depending on where the sources are embedded within the text, this can make prose more difficult to read. Fewer and fewer genealogists use this system any more because of the difficulties it presents, and the ease with which footnotes can be inserted in modern word processing systems.

Permalink Reply by Michelle Watson on October 22, 2009 at 5:16pm

G'day Stephanie,

Thanks for sharing that. Nice to know what the feelings of other groups is in respect to this. I have to admit my personal preference is footnotes, for all the reasons given in the newsletter article. I don't know about the "right' way but definately what I like to do.

And I suppose the benefit of using modern word processing programs is that you can easily change from one to the other if required.

Cheers,
Michelle

Permalink Reply by Catherine Davis on November 2, 2009 at 7:23pm

My personal preference--for short pieces, I like footnotes. For long pieces with lots of notes, I like endnotes because it is really disconcerting to see a page with 10 lines of text and 46 lines of footnotes. Also, if you are using notes for both source documentation and for a greater explanation of some element of your text, I'd use both footnotes and endnotes--the footnotes for the extra explanation, the endnotes for sources. Just use different symbols--number for the more numerous endnotes, asterisks, crosses, alphas, etc for the footnotes.

Permalink Reply by Victor G Carre on November 12, 2009 at 8:53am

I tend to like footnotes. Footnotes, I actually read. I don't like flipping back and forth so endnotes usually get short changed.

Permalink Reply by Judy Druck Routson on November 12, 2009 at 4:17pm

I'm with you as far as footnotes. I hate endnotes! Some people say footnotes are distracting, but it's my feeling that they can skip them if they want. For people like me, who like to check the references, endnotes are a real nuisance!
I published my family history book last year about this time, and I used footnotes. I haven't heard any complaints about them, although I've had lots of praise for the book (check out my blogsite www.judyroutson.wordpress.com).
Good luck!