Quote:
Originally Posted by ghmerrill
In my case, references to footnotes (more properly "notes") and to bibliographic entries (let's call them "bibrefs") will ALL be indicated by a superscript asterisk -- always and without fail. Asterisks occur nowhere else in the book except as note/bibref indicators (and in fact, conceptually, a bibref is just a kind of note). So the reader will (once instructed, at least) KNOW that a superscript '*' MEANS "Here's a LINK". There's nothing magic about using a numeral or underlining or (excessive) underlined numeral to indicate a footnote, end note, or reference citation. And this approach is fully general and without exception (in my book). For devices displaying color, then yes, I do make the asterisk the traditional blue. For devices not displaying color, it's still an asterisk (as, similarly, with lines in the now traditional approach, which are still lines and also not blue).
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So that triple asterisk whether a literal 3 asterisks with spaces or an image used by many books to indicate a scene break should be deprecated And personally, I tend to use superscripted numbers for footnotes, etc. though that is my personal preference. I will admit that I generally colour the numbers blue as an eInk ereader will show it as a shade of gray distinguishing it from black text.
And I don't even want to think about trying to make that work on epub2, epub3, mobi, AZW3 and KFX format ebooks on multiple devices and renderers.
I only believe in "intuitive" elements on alternate Wednesdays.