Cool thread.

"I actually use custom little floating reference thingies* when I handwrite an article for splicing in additional text"
Me too.

One interesting feature of these symbols vis-à-vis numbers or alphabetics is obviously that they're not inherently sequential. So while numbers seem more practical in situations where you have lots of annotations/footnotes/etc., I would imagine that in more literary texts, and/or ones that use fewer notes (and no endnotes that are all lumped together!), a more graphical solution would certainly be a very nice option.

One question is if a bit of intuitively «readable» «sequentialness» would still be desirable for annotation symbols, for example by means of repeating elements that could increase in number (lines, points…), or elements that get larger etc. But the fewer annotations you need (and the more easily the bits they refer to can be found), the less that's important.

So, do we make this into a Type Battle of sorts? :)

Actually, I was thinking along similar lines, prompted by the same thread.
But I was too lazy and too slow a typer to start a new thread (and also not sure of the possible interest, but on this I was mistaken, it seems :-).
Anyway, some random thoughts:
* Typesetting text, I often need some sort of reference symbol which is distinct from the figures used for endnotes/footnotes.
* Usually I use the asterisk, which is fine for one, not so good for two (**), simply unacceptable for three ("What's that, a censored swearword?").
* The dagger, especially in sans serif typefaces, could be (conf)used to indicate a cross, meaning the (date of) death of a person (making especially unsuitable its use in conjunction with proper names).
* I often end up using (oh, the horror!) the readily available degree sign (°).
* If designers would want to insert these newly devised glyphs in their fonts, which codepoints should they use?

That said, I think the sketch I made in the other thread has potential.

I'm just not sure if I will call it Daggerism (loaning from asterism) or Daggerisk, following Altaira's suggestion ;-)

Related to the dagger ↔ cross thing: http://typophile.com/node/57592

'heart.sups' is my starter...

Its a bit wide and dark maybe it needs to be broken or stabbed with the dagger?

@ John Hudson: I agree that numbers have their fundamental function and are a superior solution for longer series of notes.
But there are instances in which some other kind of symbol would come handy instead or alongside them.
Just look at the success of the asterisk.

@ userone: That heart sure is cute! And I can think at several appropriate uses. The double bar, I think is too similar to a roman two.

John, as others are saying, I would think that if you have a certain number of notes per page/chapter in a work, non-numeric annotation symbols can give a nice flavor without causing functional hassles. I would say this number is between 3 and maybe 7 if it's footnotes, and 3 and maybe 15 if it's endnotes.

BTW, in general I personally prefer footnotes to endnotes - they're faster.

hhp

I still think there is something to this and lay down the challenge to come up with 4 more to add to Kent's (Chicago MS's) 6 to make a total of 10 annotated markings!

How about crossed daggers? Since they look like daggers, readers will probably assume they're for reference.

Also related...

http://typophile.com/node/30176

The combined system with foot- and endnotes as mentioned by Don is actually used quite often in academic books. One prominent example which uses asterisk, dagger, double-dagger etc. for footnotes and numbers for endnotes is Ari Rafaeli’s »Book Typography«.

Between endnotes and footnotes, I prefer sidenotes! ;-)

By far the most common way to cite things in academic works now is in the text, with reference to a bibliography. So you get a reference like: (Freud 1900a, p. 56), and in the bibliography you have the details on the book referred to by Freud 1900a. That's assuming you have more than one publication by Freud that year which you want to refer to.

This is so much cleaner than past methods that I don't think they can compete.

Explanatory notes are a different matter, and where to put these depends on the book or article as to what is best.

And yes, side notes can be charming, and are under-used in books. Pull quotes and side bars are common in magazines.

Riccardo's concept echoes something I was thinking, in terms of making an ordered system that is somewhat intuitive:

 
The higher values get more difficult to distinguish.

I like what Riccardo's example suggests a little better. But I would skip that first "minus" and start with the second for the first order, maybe give it a "plus" form.

> (maybe one is footnoting an equation, where they might be confused with raising a number to a power)

This is precisely the kind of situation where Chicago prescribes symbols:

"§13.50 Other reference marks. For a table that includes mathematical or chemical equations, where superior letters or numerals might be mistaken for exponents, a series of arbitrary symbols may be used . . . as follows:"

And the recommended sequence of symbols is that which I cited previously.

This is so much cleaner than past methods that I don’t think they can compete.

I might disagree with that. Is interrupting my paragraph with parenthetical citations really "cleaner"? Maybe this is a case of We Like Best What We Read Most, but I prefer foot- or endnotes (as are still used quite broadly in my field of art history).

In cases where citations and explanatory notes are divided into different systems of notation, how does one handle an explanatory note that also requires a citation, or a citation that also requires an explanatory note (both of which are likely to appear frequently in what I read and write)?

As for the new character challenge, here's my unserious submission:

>Is interrupting my paragraph with parenthetical citations really “cleaner”?

Yes, here's why. Citations this way are clearly citations, and being in parentheses can be skipped by the eye. When you have everything in foot or end notes, you don't know whether they are explanatory or simply citations, so you annoyingly have to go hunting to see whether it's something significant to your interests.

Where explanatory notes go should depend on the work, and the author's notion of their function, which he or she should be clear about. Then it may make sense to have them as end notes, side notes, or footnotes.

I think the separation of citations and explanatory notes has been a real advance in layout of scholarly works.

You could also do citations as numbered end notes, and explanations as side or foot notes. The most important thing I think is the separation of the two, whatever device you use.

[This belongs under William Berkson's post.]

"and being in parentheses can be skipped by the eye"

Not really all that easy to skip'em though. You have to spot the opening parenthesis, then decide it's a citation and not a parenthesized statement that you're actually supposed to read inline with the text*, and then find the closing parenthesis. Seems to make for a lot of stop-and-go while reading.
* To help this distinction I've previously used all small caps with small caps parentheses for the citations – makes the skippin' a little easier, but they still seem to stand in the way of smooth text flow.

"When you have foot or end notes, you don’t know whether they are explanatory or simply citations, so you annoyingly have to go hunting to see whether it’s something significant to your interests."

Which is exactly why it'd be cool to have distinctive markers for the two. That's smart typography if you ask me (and not really that hard to "learn").

Speaking of smart, I DIG Riccardo's Chinese-influenced ones!

>Not really all that easy to skip’em though.

Yes it is, compared to having to go hunting at the back of the book to see whether or not you want to read the note.

Ideally, you keep the form of the citation short, so you do see the opening and closing parens and the number, clearly signaling a citation. I agree that it can help to use small caps too. Practically every scholarly journal I have seen for the past 40 years uses this format for citations, and most books. What can you suggest that's better?

The book I am finishing writing is littered with references to Bible and Talmud, and I'm doing all citations in small cap abbreviations, followed by chapter and verse, or Talmudic page. So these are in parens, the span of seven or eight characters. And there are no foot notes, end notes or side notes, though there are introductory notes and appendices.

So I'm not stuck on the reference-in-parens style, but I am totally convinced that if you have a lot of citations, they shouldn't be mixed with explanatory notes.

I think this is a matter of trying to make it easy and efficient for the reader to navigate, and both author and designer should be thinking about how to do that.

>I thought it was stated:
- Numeric annotations for endnotes.
- Symbolic annotations for footnotes.

Oh sorry, I didn't get it.

The advantage of the in line version is a. you have it and you're done, and it's easily skippable; b. it is space saving: if you have citations at the end, you can have a citation each line, so you eat up pages, or you have to reset with columns.

But there's a separate problem with foot notes, which is that they are usually very ugly and distracting, compared to side or end notes. I think they should be used very sparingly, if at all, and there shouldn't be more than two per page. Otherwise it gets *really* ugly.

I like all the little dingbats, but I just don't see the need for more than a few foot notes, ever.

I can see the use of the little dingbats if you have a list of members of an organization and want to distinguish various statuses, such as founder, member of the board, eastern division, etc, something like that might be useful.

Aesthetically, I don't really like the inline citations, especially not when there are a lot of them on the page. Functionally, though, I do think they are the best approach, not least because they make it immediately apparent to the reader where a particular idea is coming from. In books with citations in footnotes or endnotes, I only occasionally bothered to look up citations; I am aware, with the inline citations, of a greater contextuality to my reading. That seems to me a functional editorial benefit, even if typographically I don't like the look of it much.

But there’s a separate problem with foot notes, which is that they are usually very ugly and distracting, compared to side or end notes. I think they should be used very sparingly, if at all, and there shouldn’t be more than two per page. Otherwise it gets *really* ugly.

Have you ever saw something written by David Foster Wallace? ;-)

John, I agree with you that inline citations are a problem aesthetically. But to me superscript numbers or symbols are also even more distracting and disruptive. Because of their position to me they are like little alarm bells that tell you that you need to stop and look something up.

The cleanest method is where everything is in end notes with no superscript characters in the text. In this method, you have a running head above the end notes indicating which pages the notes relate to. Then before the note itself you have the page number and the phrase which has the associated citation or commentary.

Which approach is best I think depends on the nature of the text. For example, if you have a scholarly history that discusses various other historian's views, then in line citations I think would be appropriate. If you have a narrative history that goes for aesthetically pleasing story telling, then shoving all citations to the end, and keeping the text completely clean would be best.

Footnotes are the worst, because yes, Hrant, it is very disruptive on page after page to look down the page, and then have to go back and hunt down where you were in the text. And I don't think my aesthetic objection is a matter of 'modernism'; I'm not a modernist. It's just ugly.

Nina, as far as visual aesthetics, I think the only thing that is really problematic are foot notes. You can also mess up side notes visually, but if carefully done in an appropriate layout they can work.

The issue of in-line citations VS end notes with superior figures in the text VS end notes with no superior figures to me is mainly an issue of comfort and ease of use for the reader.

On the question of comfort and ease of use in the system with no superior figures, my experience is not the same as yours. I find it obvious when a quotation or factual claim calls for a citation, and if I want it, I'll go look at the end of a book. I'm grateful that there's nothing distracting me from the text and pushing me to look it up. As to explanatory notes, I'll just look at all the end notes before or after I read the text, and see if there is anything I find interesting.

My impression is that the cleanest method is becoming more and more popular, though it is more work in producing the book.

By the way, with electronic texts, you have a lot more options because of the possibility of hypertext links. That's an advantage of electronic texts, along with search-ability.

>Parenthesized stuff right in the line doesn’t do that?

No, it doesn't push you because the information is right there, and you don't have to go looking, wondering what it is. If you want actually to read the source cited, then you can go to the bibliography for info.

> it doesn’t push you because the information is right there

I have to concede that point.
But I worry that inline stuff is just too hard to ignore if you want to.

> glancing out to the margin and back .... is a faster process

Good point, I just worry that the temptation to look at the margin note* before its time is too great. As for the aesthetic argument, I think can go either way.

* Exactly because our eyes prefer the horizontal; plus it stands out in the empty margin.

--

Maybe my own reading habits are simply too inquisitive.

BTW, this is exactly the sort of thing that could be tested quite well empirically (unlike reading performance, which is a huge challenge).

hhp