First Published: 2024 January 2
a] At the beginning of the ’blog, I mentioned that one of my great inspirations for writing this was my father.1
One of the2 most striking pieces of his blog is the use of footnotes. That is, in addition to using footnotes,5 he also uses end notes which are called from other end notes.6 Now, like many people exploring a medium, he has done any number of interesting things with these end notes.8
As someone trying to emulate a lot of his blog,10 I also wanted nested footnotes. It turns out that, while I am not unique in this request, I am close to it. There appears to be a single reason that style guides believe that footnotes or end notes11 can be reasonably nested. As we know12 , there are only a few circumstances that most style guides will accept footnotes.
Obviously, citations can go there in some style guides, but there is absolutely no reason that you would need a footnote from a citation.13 Otherwise, asides are sometimes welcome in the footnote, though, of course, it is bad for bonus thoughts to have their own bonus thoughts in most formal writing. Finally, translator’s notes or editorial comments on editorial or translated editions, counterrespectively,14 are allowed end or footnotes. I’m sure that some of you have pieced together where the nested footnote is allowed. A translator’s note on a translated editorial piece may need to reference an aside as an aside.
These tend to be ranked, however. They are nested, so there is a clear sense of ownership between first level and second level footnotes. I don’t like that. To me, there are three levels of importance in the words within a text: main text, footnote, and not included.15 I want footnotes referenced in other footnotes to be on the same level.
Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned a few times on here, this ’blog17 is written in LaTeX which is then compiled into HTML. LaTeX generally does not have issues with nesting of footnotes, but pandoc does not support it natively. For a while, I thought that I might need to switch to Markdown. Thankfully, I am related to people who are not just infinitely better at their domains than I am, but are also incredibly skilled in those domains on an objective level. My father was willing and able over break to figure out how to let nested end notes be a thing in my writings without forcing me to change from LaTeX. It does require a little bit of change, but that isn’t too much.18 One benefit will definitely be that the text will stay cleaner, because the bonus thoughts will keep being nested somewhere else.19
For other examples of endnotes used in creative ways, I have been told the book20 “House of Leaves” does a wonderful job exploring the limits of the written page.