The rhetoric of citation systems—Part I: The development of annotation structures from the renaissance to 1900*

Readers will notice that this essay violates Rhetoric Review‘s own citation style, which follows New MLA in asking for endnotes rather than footnotes. I specifically requested this change of the editor, and she has graciously assented. As I will detail in the second part of the article, endnotes were a system that MLA went to in 1977 as the field of English became more populist and the main concern in manuscripts began to be ease of typing and cheapness of typesetting; no one argued, then or since, for any rhetorical superiority of endnotes over footnotes. Indeed, most people agree that from a reader's point of view, endnotes are a pain, whether they are citational or discursive. They force you to search and flip pages when a footnote would allow you to glance at the bottom of the column. The only virtue of endnotes is that they are easier to type on a typewriter.

This move to endnotes was a situational decision by the MLA. The great word‐processing revolution, which would within ten years create a technology that automatically measures and sets footnotes, came just a few years too late; now, of course, all WP programs and graphic programs used by printers can set footnotes automatically and without extra cost. So we're still living in the backwash of a pragmatic decision about note placement that predates our current typographic abilities. Of course, some authors, like Gibbon, may prefer to have their manuscripts run clean‐page, without footnotes, as if they were not scholarship. That should be the call of each individual author. The reason I asked specifically that footnotes be used here is the same reason most literary journals have refused to switch to New MLA: I want to make my decisions about how my page will look to readers on a “rhetorical”; basis. I have simply found footnotes a more precise system, allowing for a text/note dialogism that endnotes kill completely. And given the fact that the only footnotes still allowed by New MLA are discursive, that dialogism is even more important.

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Notes

Readers will notice that this essay violates Rhetoric Review‘s own citation style, which follows New MLA in asking for endnotes rather than footnotes. I specifically requested this change of the editor, and she has graciously assented. As I will detail in the second part of the article, endnotes were a system that MLA went to in 1977 as the field of English became more populist and the main concern in manuscripts began to be ease of typing and cheapness of typesetting; no one argued, then or since, for any rhetorical superiority of endnotes over footnotes. Indeed, most people agree that from a reader's point of view, endnotes are a pain, whether they are citational or discursive. They force you to search and flip pages when a footnote would allow you to glance at the bottom of the column. The only virtue of endnotes is that they are easier to type on a typewriter.

This move to endnotes was a situational decision by the MLA. The great word‐processing revolution, which would within ten years create a technology that automatically measures and sets footnotes, came just a few years too late; now, of course, all WP programs and graphic programs used by printers can set footnotes automatically and without extra cost. So we're still living in the backwash of a pragmatic decision about note placement that predates our current typographic abilities. Of course, some authors, like Gibbon, may prefer to have their manuscripts run clean‐page, without footnotes, as if they were not scholarship. That should be the call of each individual author. The reason I asked specifically that footnotes be used here is the same reason most literary journals have refused to switch to New MLA: I want to make my decisions about how my page will look to readers on a “rhetorical”; basis. I have simply found footnotes a more precise system, allowing for a text/note dialogism that endnotes kill completely. And given the fact that the only footnotes still allowed by New MLA are discursive, that dialogism is even more important.