[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

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.

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

Abbreviations
General

AP       Avon Papers at Birmingham University Archives
[...]
CS       ed. Robert Rhodes James, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, published in New York in eight volumes in 1974
[...]
OB       The Official Biography of Sir Winston Churchill. Vols. I and II by Randolph S. Churchill and vols. III to VIII by (Sir) Martin Gilbert, published in eight volumes between 1966 and 1988: 
OB I     Winston S. Churchill: Youth 1874–1900   1966

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":

Ford   Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by P. L. Ford.
[...]
LC     Library of Congress. Unless otherwise indicated the references are to the Jefferson Papers.

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.