We'll have to agree to disagree on the footnotes, mostly because formatting them is a bitch and MLA is so damn much easier.
But this is the one area where Word actually helps you rather than hinders you! Footnotes are easy in Word!
I like them for several reasons:
- I don't usually care where someone got their information unless it's an unreliable source, and in peer-reviewed journals, that's pretty much not going to happen. Thus, I can skip the footnotes in a way I can't the in-line citations. If for some reason I do want to go back and see who they cited and what page the original is on, it's a lot easier to just flip through the footnotes than the whole book or article. Plus, most quotes are introduced along the lines of "As XYZ writes...," and the page number after that is so much better in a footnote than taking up space in the paper itself.
- When I'm writing papers, it's a lot easier to tell if I'm citing someone overmuch by looking back through the footnotes than combing through the entire paper looking for parenthetical citations. If I see "Ibid" too many times, then I know I'm just summarizing someone else's argument rather than synthesizing my research. MLA doesn't have that handy visual cue.
- Nine out of ten journals use some variant of Chicago, or at least footnotes. It looks so much more professional than MLA, which as far as I can tell is used almost exclusively by students.
However, endnotes are an abomination unto the LORD. None of this applies to them.
(And I have offically Thought Too Much about this issue.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 11:13 pm (UTC)But this is the one area where Word actually helps you rather than hinders you! Footnotes are easy in Word!
I like them for several reasons:
- I don't usually care where someone got their information unless it's an unreliable source, and in peer-reviewed journals, that's pretty much not going to happen. Thus, I can skip the footnotes in a way I can't the in-line citations. If for some reason I do want to go back and see who they cited and what page the original is on, it's a lot easier to just flip through the footnotes than the whole book or article. Plus, most quotes are introduced along the lines of "As XYZ writes...," and the page number after that is so much better in a footnote than taking up space in the paper itself.
- When I'm writing papers, it's a lot easier to tell if I'm citing someone overmuch by looking back through the footnotes than combing through the entire paper looking for parenthetical citations. If I see "Ibid" too many times, then I know I'm just summarizing someone else's argument rather than synthesizing my research. MLA doesn't have that handy visual cue.
- Nine out of ten journals use some variant of Chicago, or at least footnotes. It looks so much more professional than MLA, which as far as I can tell is used almost exclusively by students.
However, endnotes are an abomination unto the LORD. None of this applies to them.
(And I have offically Thought Too Much about this issue.)