thesis gets published as a book readers will face no extra diffi-
culty in using notes placed all together at the back. The great
plus point of endnotes, even more than the Harvard system, is
that it creates a clean-looking main text, with only relatively
unobtrusive in-text note numbers, ideally not too numerous or
overdone.
Footnotes follow the same format for full details and subse-
quent references as in the two endnotes boxes above. But these
citation details are given at the bottom of the same page as the
note number. Footnotes maximize one-stop look-up. Endnotes
are clearly less convenient for readers than footnotes. None the
less footnotes are still a slightly worse system to use for authoring
a thesis, even with the rapid advances made by modern word
processors in handling them. They are somewhat harder for you
to control and keep up to date when you cut and paste text, as you
will have to do extensively. Usually there will be some enhanced
difficulties in maintaining version control between footnotes and
a bibliography compared with endnotes, where all your references
for a chapter are at least gathered together and printed in one
place. And repagination problems tend to increase with footnotes.
Footnotes also maximize the clutter of referencing that readers
see. Especially in PhD dissertations, they often give a ragged and
uneven appearance to your final printed pages, with notes appar-
ently ‘squeezing’ the main text. Because of these and other prob-
lems journals and almost all book publishers have moved away
from footnotes. For instance, if readers are accessing journals on-
line (as more and more are doing), then it is often hard for them
to keep two different-sized fonts on the same page readable. Either
the main text is in focus but the footnotes are too small; or the
footnotes are visible but the main text is then too big.
You will often need to rearrange both footnotes and end-
notes for publication. This task is a very easy one for your word
processor if it entails swapping endnotes to footnotes, or vice
versa. But swapping between notes systems and Harvard refer-
encing is only easy if you are using a citations-handling pack-
age like Endnote. The most difficult rewriting occurs if you are
redoing notes for a journal or a book using Harvard referencing
and have to eliminate subtexts. Using footnotes has its most
likely adverse impact on authors’ intellectual habits here,
encouraging you to create subtexts and then carry on vigorous
132 ◆AUTHORING A PHD