You know what, sweetie? I would rather buy the book for you and have YOU look and see, than to try to explain it. Seriously. Ping me and lemme know if you want it.

Warning--buy head protection first, so that when you start clunking your head on the desk, I won't suffer guilt that I caused you brain-damage.

Hitch

I've borrowed this Churchill book from Overdrive and it's really slow with ADE. It has 983 different links with a lot of them doubled in the back. It's a nightmare at best.

YUP, that's it.

There are more than 983 links back there, trust me. What's interesting is that this book, too, has footnotes and endnotes--and the latter are NOT linked. You click and guess what?

Nuthin'. That's what.

Hitch

It's a bit unkind to call that a Churchill book. It's actually an Andrew Roberts book!

Sounds like Mr Roberts committed the sort of nonsense up with which Churchill would not have put.

Well, NJ, if you like, I could call it a paper book, which would be the most accurate in terms of its derivation, yeah?

The thing is a horror, in eBook format. I don't know what they did, what they were thinking...it's boggy as hell (which, yes, was going to occur with over 1100 pages), and the reality I faced, when I clicked links that took me to the NOTES section, but *not to the note in question,* that was pretty mind-blowing.

Hitch

Ahhh yes, I always forget that little superscript 'e' in French.

I'll have to add that to my notes.

Superior Letters is the term, and you can find more examples here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_letter

There's also the Ordinal Indicator (a little superscript 'a' or 'o' or '°' [degree sign] that used while marking first/second/third place):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_indicator

No need to waste money on such abominations. I'll acquire it elsewhere.

If you want to send me a DRM-free version for research purposes, I'd be open though.

Am I seeing this correct?

• 1 = Endnotes
• fn1 = Footnotes

Within the text, they're superscripted. They're also jammed together, so if two notes are next to each other, you get:

1fn1

:smack:

(Another reason why brackets are good in ebooks, then you'll see a more distinct "[1][fn1]".)

When you jump to the actual note chapters...

Endnotes are jammed into one enormous paragraph with a bunch of non-breaking spaces between. Something along these lines:

Why? Just why?

Footnotes, you get all of them wrapped in <blockquote> + centered... and similarly ugly code with millions of useless non-breaking spaces before/after numbers:

At least it's not all in a single paragraph! :smack:

And this thing was published in 2018!!!

How does this abomination not have a KQN (Kindle Quality Notice)? That big, red banner should be scaring away buyers and knock some sense into whoever created that hideous thing.

Yes, there are more the 983 different links because there are a few out of book links. 983 is the number of different numbered links even though they are used in the back sometimes multiple times.

With all those links, there are some that don't work? WOW!

I got mine from Overdrive. I refused to pay for it.


I think this eBook should be reported to Amazon so it can be taken down.

I have no idea if this abomination can be fixed. I would drop all of the footnotes as WTF does this mean OB I p. 19 and CS I p. 293. The notes are meaningless.

Hah! It's officially "Great on Kindle" which implies it's been vetted by amazon.

As I don't have a Kindle version, does it slow down on a Kindle when you get past the pictures?

I do not have any version of that book.

... it's explained right in the beginning of the notes:

When you're constantly referencing the same works over and over again, it's simpler/shorter to use abbreviations.

Thousands of extra words would be needed if you were writing out the entire full (or even short) title... turning your 1100 page book into 1400. (See Side Note below for real-life example.)

Another Abbreviations Example

Dumas Malone wrote a fantastic 6-volume work on Thomas Jefferson, "Jefferson and His Time".

Each one is ~600 pages with ~1000-1500 footnotes each.

Towards the end of each book, he had a chapter with a "List of Short Titles":

So a footnote like this:

• [20] To Small, May 7, 1775, LC, 1:140, partly printed in Ford, I, 453–455.

would be equivalent to the fully written out form:

• [20] To Small, May 7, 1775, Library of Congress, 1:140, partly printed in Ford, P.L., ed. Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. I, 453–455.

* * *

Complete Side Note:

Short Titles + Selected Bibliography

Short Titles can also be done in 2 ways. By using:

• Full citation in first reference, then short every time after that.
  
  • Per chapter or per book.
• Selected Bibliography
  
  • Short citation throughout book, full citation in bibliography.

For example, a few years ago I worked on a 600-page History book with ~2000 footnotes.

Here was the full citations before I got my hands on them:

• [162] George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, Or the Failure of Free Society, Richmond: VA, A. Morris Publisher, 1854, pp. 27–28.
• [163] George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters, Richmond: VA, A. Morris Publisher, 1857, p. 278.
• [164] George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, Or the Failure of Free Society, Richmond: VA, A. Morris Publisher, 1854, p. 170.

After:

• [162] Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, pp. 27–28.
• [163] Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, p. 278.
• [164] Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, p. 170.

+ Selected Bibliography:

• Fitzhugh, George. Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters. Richmond, VA: A. Morris Publisher, 1857.
• ———. Sociology for the South, Or the Failure of Free Society. Richmond, VA: A. Morris Publisher, 1854.

Isn't that so much more readable?

~500 fully-typed out citations were condensed into 88 in the Selected Bibliography.

Using Short Titles, ~3000 words were shaved from the book.

Let's say your book was still too long (like 1100 pages)... you'd cut thousands more words just by changing Short Title -> Abbreviations:

• [164] George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, Or the Failure of Free Society, Richmond: VA, A. Morris Publisher, 1854, p. 170.
• [164] Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, p. 170.
• [164] SS, p. 170.

You can see how that would cut down the size of footnotes dramatically.

But the abbreviations would mean either having to try to remember what they mean or having to go and refer to the list when you did forget.

Given that most people don't care about what book some passage or information came from, I would just dump the footnotes. Then I can dump the sections that the footnotes refer to.

This is absurd. Footnotes and proper citations are an integral piece of all texts.

Just stop it before you even make more of a fool out of yourself.

Hi

Looking after this archeological and nice post, I feel eleven years younger.:)

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...0&postcount=70

What I find interesting, is that the sup tag here uses three attributes (the values of which are moreless a matter of taste) and the three of them concur nicely to provide a stable display for the superscript text. That was also my major point (nothing new).
- vertical-align (I've chosen text-top)
- font-size (I've chosen smaller)
- line-height (I've chosen 1)

Now a note on note anchors (no more superscript only).

As many still use brackets (I understand there is a need to enlarge the clicking surface, but I can't help thinking it looks artificial and it should not be a long term solution), these users have to take into account the sheer height of a bracket versus a plain digit or a lowcase letter.

It must have an unfavourable impact over the vertical positioning of the note anchor. It would seem logical to replace the bracket by a dash so as not to perturb it but this would have to face established usage... Well...