Footnotes
Whether you should use footnotes or not in your academic article or thesis depends on the subject you are writing about.
Where to use footnotes.
If you are in the sciences, then references customarily tend to be in the body of an article rather than at the bottom of each page or the end of each chapter. Social science subjects tend to use both, and the humanities uses the most footnotes. In a thesis, readers tend to appreciate seeing notes at the end of each chapter, rather than having to dig for them at the very end of your work. Of course, footnotes, like references, are a means of documentation that can keep you from inadvertently being guilty of plagiarism. If your writing offers too much documentation, no one will ever accuse you of plagiarism. However, if your article or thesis is underdocumented, then problems can arise. So it is safer to use footnotes, except for science, than not use them. They help the reader find out exactly where you got information, and if they wish to hunt down the same information, the details you provide should be enough for them to find it.
Microsoft Word can be your friend.
On each Word document, in the section at the top of the page marked References, it is easy to find and click on “insert footnote.” Your ajarn or the editor of the journal you are submitting your article to should have advice about formatting footnotes. Otheriwse, a standard format for footnotes is to list:
The author’s initials and last name, Title of book, name of the publisher, where it was published, year, page or pages where the reference is found. number.
In other words:
- Ivry, Maurice Ravel: a Life, Welcome Rain, New York, 2000, p.12-22.
There are many other formats, so check before you write. If you are not sure when a book was published, there are many ways to search online for this information, since you will want to mention the first year a book was published, unless you are specifically referring to a second or third edition of a book which had different content from the original version.
Once you have written out a full footnote, as above, if you cite the same book again in the same article or thesis, to save space you can just mention:
The author’s last name, page number or numbers.
Ivry, 18-19.
Whatever approach you choose, you must use it for the entire piece of writing, otherwise readers, editors, and ajarns will be confused about what you are trying to say.
Try not to be gossipy in footnotes.
Since footnotes are really just to locate the information you have used, it is better not to use them to add extra ideas that you somehow cannot fit into the rest of your writing. While you may think it looks good to have lots of extra ideas about any subject and share them with readers, the fact is that by stuffing material that does not really belong in a thesis or article into footnotes, you can end up looking disorganized. If you can find a place for any such added notions in the paper or article itself, that is fine, but try not to place them in the footnotes for the sake of clarity.
Always end with a full stop. (.)
Often writers of footnotes forgot to add simple punctuation, which makes a sloppy impression. Since the footnote is a sentence like any other, it should have a full stop (.) at the end of it, following basic English rules.
Don’t hide your footnotes in the middle of sentences.
Some writers inconsiderately place the superscript numbers – numbers that are smaller than the rest of the line of typeface and located just above it – for footnotes somewhere in the middle of a sentence, making them hard to find for readers. A general rule is that the footnote number should always be at the end of a sentence, where it stands out more clearly.
The challenges of Latin abbreviations for footnotes.
Thai students and ajarns must be concerned with getting their English correct, and the added challenge of understanding and using Latin abbreviations can seem like a needless extra burden. Still, insofar as scholarly research in English as well as the Romance languages used Latin centuries ago, it can be worth looking up certain details, just to have a clear idea of what you are doing. Most native English speakers do not bother to learn Latin – or Greek – any more and have only a vague idea of what these abbreviations mean, but for a Thai person hoping to use these abbreviations accurately, it can help to take the time to find out what they are all about.
Ibid.
Ibid. is a Latin abbreviation that means in the same place. So if one footnote gives information about a book, and the very next footnote is about the exact same book, then instead of writing “in the same place, p. 48” or “from the same place, p. 39” you can write “ibid., p. 39.” Remember that this is an abbreviation, which means there is always a full stop after “ibid.”
Id., short for idem.
Some writers, especially lawyers and the like, will use the Latin word idem, which also means “the same.” However, if you take the trouble to get the use of ibid. correct, then why not just use that instead of trying different Latin abbreviations that essentially mean the same thing? Make your life as easy as possible. Likewise, the perfectly good English language term “for example” should be used instead of trying to impress readers with the Latin abbreviation e. g., for the words exemplī grātiā. Why should you volunteer for the risk of getting things wrong, and the need for knowing what exemplī grātiā means, when it only means for example and that is so much easier to use? In the same way, Thai writers strain to make an effect by avoiding the clear and simple English word “namely,” and instead use viz., yet another Latin abbreviation for the word videlicet or namely. Why bother to use fancy Latin abbreviations when simpler English terms exist? Writers of Thai academic English often try to use what they see as the most fancy and impressive terms, and this usually leads to many mistakes that could have otherwise been avoided. So keep it simple, and keep it in English, when you can. Ibid. is a useful abbreviation, but that does not mean you should litter your writings with many Latin abbreviations you only partly understand.
Op. cit.
Op. cit. is another Latin abbreviation useful for footnotes, used for books which you have already mentioned once in your notes, but are not mentioned in the previous footnote, where ibid. would be appropriate. Instead, op. cit. is short for opere citato, or “in the work cited.” When you use op. cit., you must also cite the author’s name and even the title of the book in question if your notes have more than one entry for the same name, as well as the page number. So if you had already discussed a book by Puey Ungpakorn, you could then refer to Ungpakorn, op. cit., p. 90. If you have discussed more than one book by Puey, you can add the extra information of a shortened version of the title to make it easier for the reader to know what book you are referring to: Ungpakorn, The Quality of Life, op. cit., p. 90.
(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)