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(U) The Humble Footnote: Every Dog Has His Day
FROM:
the SIDtoday Editor
Run Date: 07/30/2008
(U) Here's another in an intermittent series of articles with general
tips on writing...
(U) Many people do not have warm feelings towards footnotes.
They remind them of some disagreeable things, for example:
Memories of writing term papers in school and having to
create lots of tedious footnotes containing strange Latin
terms like "ibid." and "Op. cit." to explain where they got
the text they are citing; or
Offers from businesses (for example, a bank wants to
extend a line of credit, or someone wants the recipients to
claim their "free" new sports car), with all of the fine print
contained in hard-to-decipher footnotes laced with large
amounts of legal jargon.
...No wonder people are turned off by footnotes!
(U) Footnotes don't always deserve their bad reputation, however.
In fact, if you are a writer, there are times when the lowly footnote
can prove itself your best friend. How so? You can use footnotes
to provide explanatory details, without interrupting the flow
of the text.
(U) Here's an example: let's say you are writing about a
conference you attended, and you want to list all of the many
organizations that were represented. If you tried to include that in
the main text, it might look like this:
"This September, I had the pleasure of attending an
intelligence conference in sunny Hawaii. I was joined by
dozens of colleagues from the SID Customer Relationships
Directorate, the SID Analysis & Production (A&P)
Directorate, the NSA/CSS Texas A&P Directorate, the
Alaska Mission Operations Center, the Misawa Security
Operations Center, the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency..."
Not exactly a riveting read! Any kind of forward momentum you
may have built up with the first sentence has come screeching to a
halt with the second.
(U) So what to do about it? If you are tempted to just name the
organizations by their abbreviations in order to shorten the list and
get the pain over with faster, resist the urge! Unless you know for
sure that all of your readers are familiar with the abbreviations in
question ("CIA" and "FBI" are well known to anyone who's ever
watched a Hollywood movie, but most other abbreviations are
questionable), you really ought to expand all of the abbreviations
for clarity's sake.
SERIES:
The Pointy End of the
Pen
1. Did He 'Go' Into the
Courthouse, or
'Sneak' Into It?
2. Writing for the Mass
Audience: All's Well
that Begins Well?
3. Team Writing
Projects: Too Many
Cooks Spoil the
Soup?
4. The Humble
Footnote: Every Dog
Has His Day
5. It's OK to Have a
Personality... Most of
the Time!
6. The Chisel and the
Vision
(U) The better approach is to make a general "catch-all" statement
in the main text, and spell out all of the nitty-gritty details in a
footnote. The result might look like this:
This September, I had the pleasure of attending an
intelligence conference in sunny Hawaii. I was joined by
dozens of colleagues from NSA and several other US
intelligence agencies* for some very interesting discussions.
...and down in the footnote, you would spell out exactly who was
there. Since the footnote doesn't affect the flow of the narrative,
you can "go to town" and name as many long organizational names
as necessary without paying any price for it.
(U) Besides long "laundry lists" of facts, here's another thing best
stashed in footnotes: definitions of uncommon terms. For example,
let's say you use a certain term and you think that most readers
will know what you are talking about, but some will not. If you stop
and explain what the term means, again, you are interrupting the
flow of the text and, to make matters worse, you are annoying the
majority who are already familiar with the term! What to do?
Again, the trusty footnote can trot to the rescue. Simply footnote
the term and explain briefly what it means at the bottom of the
page.
(U) The question might arise: "If my document is on NSANet and I
need to define an esoteric term, can't I just provide a hyperlink to
some webpage (e.g., a homepage or a wiki) where readers can find
out what they need to know?" This is a judgment call, but what I
would recommend is this:
If understanding the term is essential to understanding the
text, you really ought to provide at least the basic details in
a footnote, rather than making the readers do the work of
looking it up. (After you've given the basics, however, you
could hyperlink in the footnote to more detailed info, for
those who are really interested.)
If understanding the term is NOT essential, but only niceto-know, I think a bare hyperlink is acceptable.
(U) So, the next time you find your text bogging down in places,
think about offloading the explanatory details into footnotes... that
will keep the main narrative cruising at full speed in the literary
fast lane!
(U//FOUO) Comment: This series applies to general writing skills -not necessarily SIGINT reporting, which has its own set of
requirements... Feedback is always welcome. Also, if you would
like to suggest a topic for a future article on writing, send it to
nsa . Thanks.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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