> But I want to talk about the cognitive issues at play. When footnotes can contain anything from a citation to essential background information, the user is forced to break from the flow8 of reading – often in the middle of a sentence. This is a problem in both paper books and electronic books.
I think this is...the idea of footnotes? That you don't break the flow and it's safe to skip over them, but if you're coming back for a leisurely read later, you can look them up and see what you missed. [1] When you go over the text a second time, you can follow the references to the footnotes and see the interesting crumbs that the author laid out, which often lead to a train of thought separate from the main flow of words.
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[1] At least, this is how I have used footnotes for a while when reading, and it works quite well. YMMV, since people read and comprehend differently.
> But I want to talk about the cognitive issues at play. When footnotes can contain anything from a citation to essential background information, the user is forced to break from the flow8 of reading – often in the middle of a sentence. This is a problem in both paper books and electronic books.
I think this is...the idea of footnotes? That you don't break the flow and it's safe to skip over them, but if you're coming back for a leisurely read later, you can look them up and see what you missed. [1] When you go over the text a second time, you can follow the references to the footnotes and see the interesting crumbs that the author laid out, which often lead to a train of thought separate from the main flow of words.
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[1] At least, this is how I have used footnotes for a while when reading, and it works quite well. YMMV, since people read and comprehend differently.