Shorts
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On Footnotes, Side-notes and Molding Content to Fit the Design
My knowledge of traditional print techniques to make reading easy and smooth is fairly limited; I am a fairly modern-age book reader. So when I come across typographical elements such as footnotes and side-notes, I think about how it might enhance the presentation of writing on the web—particularly for Shorts.
I had experimented with both side-notes and footnotes on my old (now defunct) blog, but I forgot about them when I moved over to writing here, partly because one of my intentions for Shorts was to not write long pieces that might need such elements. But as this has become my writing hub of choice, I decided to slowly port the various fancy things that I had implemented in my old blog. Paragraph level links were the first, and now side-notes are here too. But the trouble with having all these ways to present is deciding when to use what1.
See: House-keeping.
The initial tendency is to just wing it—use whatever looks right at that point. But that can slowly become annoying if the reader doesn’t understand why the writer chose to present something as a side-note while another thing as a footnote. After all, these tufts are there for a reason, and shouldn’t be used unless you have a reason to. I want to set rules for myself, so that I stay honest in their use and readers understand them as well.
About The Notes, Briefly
Footnotes (or endnotes) are just that, additional text related to the context (the context being where they are linked from). They will mostly be digressions or minor additions to the topic at hand, but can also be anything I wanted to say without breaking the rhythm or subject of the paragraph. The consistent thing will be that they will be more than a line or two long. Footnotes can be safely read after reading the main piece, i.e. they will not be vital to its understanding, but they will enhance their context with extra commentary if you choose to read them.
Sidenotes will be extra or related reading for the paragraph (or line) they are against which have titles or contextual text that are too long to be linked inline. Something in the linked article will be talked about in that paragraph—whether as a reference or a summary—and having that background knowledge will help understand it better. They will mostly have a “See:” or a “Related:” prefixed to them, so that’s what they will be. These are slightly iffy, but their use will become clear when you see them.
There is a possibility that I might have something to say about a link in a side-note but I rather not break the flow of my piece, in which case we reach the slightly convoluted situation of a footnote to a side-note. There won’t be too many of those; I usually try to keep digressions to a minimum when I write.
Design for Content or Content for a Design?
If you’ve ever swapped the word “and” for an ampersand because it looked better, you will probably understand what I am talking about. I understand that content always comes first—you cannot design for bad content—but if a designer can design for content, a creator can also create content that reinforces the design2.
It’s easier to decide the layout and design the elements for books because the content doesn’t change. On the web—and especially for blogs—we have “templates”, which might be weak or strong guidelines for how to write. I would take Dustin Curtis’ blog/site as an example of a weak template. Look at his posts, and you’ll see that there is really nothing fixed about the layout except for the constant bottom area which sort of anchors it down. What I have here on the other hand would be an example of a moderately strong template. My design is chromophobic, the layout is very rigid as far as the arrangement of text goes, and using too many non-paragraphic elements (bullet lists, etc.) makes it look unpleasant. I have to occasionally re-write certain bits of my essays so that they fit in with everything else around them. So when something doesn’t look right however I put it, I have to come with a whole new way of showing them, and the solution is usually buried in print media typographical elements.
You would think designing the layout of text would come naturally to interface/interaction designers since that’s what it essentially is—making text easy to interact with, which in this case is limited to reading it, but a decent amount of experimentation goes behind it when you haven’t studied it like a subject for an arts course and you’re working purely off of experience. At the end of the day, however, if there is something I can add or change that might improve it while adding that extra element of attractiveness, I say it’s worth the time.
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There’s also the issue of how they show up in feed readers without the CSS to style them properly. I’ve written about it before. Frankly, you should be clicking through to read a piece in its native habitat if you know it’s well designed. Adding to their page views (and ad-views, if they have any) is always nice—kind of like your anonymous stamp of approval. ↩
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I couldn’t come up with a better way of forming that sentence. And I do expect to get a rap on the knuckles from both designers and writers for saying that, but I do believe that both sides are accountable for the final impact of a presentation and it’s not just one side that bears the brunt. ↩
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