Writers of Little Note

Many of my readers have complained that the articles I write are not followed up by footnotes (and therefore reduce their credibility). I disagree. Ever since high school, I have never been a lover or user of footnotes for the following reasons:

a)      They mess up the aesthetic view of the article (different size letters, numbers in the middle of the text, texts at the bottom of the page). The article starts to look like my cluttered up room.

b)      If people don't trust what I say without footnotes, they won't trust me with them anyway's.

c)      To me, they are pointless and repetitious lines of what you are saying to begin with.

d)     When you have many things to write, footnotes can be very time consuming.

e)      As long as you have the bibliographical material at the end of an article or book, it is not necessary to spoon feed the reader with footnotes. Let him investigate for himself the source from whence the material is drawn upon.

I remember how I received an “F” for a thesis I wrote in the seminary by a very meticulous professor. He was angry with me for not having used any footnotes and chewed me out in no uncertain terms. He  had considered the paper otherwise excellent except for the lack of these literary worms.
Anthony Mellace