thesis gets published as a book readers will face no extra difficulty 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 subsequent 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 lookup. Endnotes are clearly less convenient for readers than footnotes. Nonetheless 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 fora 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 apparently squeezing the main text. Because of these and other problems journals and almost all book publishers have moved away from footnotes.
For instance, if readers are accessing journals online (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 referencing is only easy if you are using a citations-handling package like
Endnote. The most difficult rewriting occurs if you are redoing notes fora 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 3 AUTHORING AP H D
sideshows there. Endnotes have less impact on authors here,
because endnotes are in a much less visible location.
Finally, for completeness, let me mention a newer citations- handling approach which is even less obtrusive than endnotes.
‘Popular science
writers follow this style, partly in hopes of broadening their appeal to readers, especially those outside the academic community. They provide a full slate of references at the end of the book, but there are no note numbers or Harvard references in the text to trigger them. Instead the reference list gives a page number, perhaps also
a line or paragraph number,
and the first few words of a quote or other phrase on that page.
This leads into a full relevant citation in endnote form. This approach may become more popular in future with academic books in soft disciplines, where authors strive fora better literary feel. But at present it would still bean unconventional referencing procedure to use for completing a PhD.
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