Endnotes – Like Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

If you haven’t had the pleasure of adding endnotes to a nonfiction manuscript, it’s the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic...does it go here, or here...and does anyone really care? In the end it’s a nightmare of formatting, editing and double-checking your sources, and never knowing for sure if you got it right. Do you have too many citations, or not enough? Additionally, determining the proper citation for your reference is like finding a needle in a haystack. An entire, long, chapter is devoted to Notes and Bibliography (but it’s mostly about annotations) in the

Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition

The mind-boggling contents of the chapter, not for the faint of heart, are listed here 14: Notes and Bibliography.

We have been aware for some time that there was an oversight in Reassessing Hallmarks of Native Southwest Jewelry, which was the exclusion of footnotes or endnotes. One particularly muddled Amazon review emphasized the necessity of citing sources and directing readers to our research. Most often we made the path of our logical conclusions clear in the text, but admittedly, there were a few instances where our logic did not shine through as we had expected. In these instances, notes would have resolved the reader’s confusion, and it might not have looked so much like we pulled one or two attributions from thin air.

However, a very conscious decision was made from the beginning of the hallmark book that we would not annotate. Our philosophy, even before we chose a publisher, was that we were writing a popular book, not a scholarly or academic tome. Mindful of the readers who could have been discouraged or distracted by notes we tried instead to make our sources clear in the text. In at least two instances we failed. But perhaps it was also the particular subject matter of the hallmark book that caused controversy among a handful of readers, as we have never experienced any criticism for failing to annotate Hopi & Pueblo Tiles: An Illustrated History.

Our oversight, though, was crystalized years later, after speaking with other published authors. One historian friend explained, “But notes are where your credibility lies.” Thus, the decision was made, from the start, to annotate our current project. The subject matter is more about history and anthropology and less about Indian art, and it is the most challenging project we have ever undertaken. Consequently we are hypersensitive to get it right.



So, from one nonfiction writer to another, may I suggest you take the time to properly format your endnotes at the time of creation. Invest in the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and get the notes written properly the first time. Really, there’s little more mind-numbing than having to go back and chase down a source for the page number or URL. And I can guarantee that you will hate, with every fiber of your being, having to double-check and re-write or re-format the notes in your entire manuscript.