From a book on Renaissance martial arts in Europe, here's part of an end note:
Like so many non-fiction texts, the end notes of this book are peppered with substantive comments that are, for some reason I cannot imagine, stuffed into the back of the book with source citations. It makes any well-sourced book far more difficult to read than it should be, since any flow in the narrative is, pardon my language, shot to hell by these textual land mines. If the substantive comments were foot notes or parentheticals, then the text would flow, because one would not be left second guessing whether to hunt throught the notes for the appropriate item.
Some may claim that what is in the end notes is not very meaningful, and I say nuts to that. I've seen end notes that blatantly contradict the text, explicitly telling me that if the author claimed the noted bit of text was in fact true, then it was only just so, and significant real controversy exists. It's as though there is a conspiracy to equalize writing ability, since a bad author's prose will probably suffer less from the interruptions.
So, why are substantive comments shoved back in the end notes? Do people really like that format?
And while I'm at it, why don't they make dust jackets out of Tyvek®? Oh, that's probably another thread, I suppose.
The handgun practice is, in some ways, the most remarkable feature of this mid-fifteenth-century scene. Nearly a century and a half later, Swanenburgh...shows arquebus practice at Leiden, yet evidence of firearms instruction in the schools is scanty. The masters....
That is perhaps one-quarter of the text of the end note.
Like so many non-fiction texts, the end notes of this book are peppered with substantive comments that are, for some reason I cannot imagine, stuffed into the back of the book with source citations. It makes any well-sourced book far more difficult to read than it should be, since any flow in the narrative is, pardon my language, shot to hell by these textual land mines. If the substantive comments were foot notes or parentheticals, then the text would flow, because one would not be left second guessing whether to hunt throught the notes for the appropriate item.
Some may claim that what is in the end notes is not very meaningful, and I say nuts to that. I've seen end notes that blatantly contradict the text, explicitly telling me that if the author claimed the noted bit of text was in fact true, then it was only just so, and significant real controversy exists. It's as though there is a conspiracy to equalize writing ability, since a bad author's prose will probably suffer less from the interruptions.
So, why are substantive comments shoved back in the end notes? Do people really like that format?
And while I'm at it, why don't they make dust jackets out of Tyvek®? Oh, that's probably another thread, I suppose.