: Notes Placement Why is it standard for a book's notes to be placed at the very end of the book—book endnotes—while only a small minority of books place each chapter's notes at the end

@XinRu607

Posted in: #Notes #Publishing #Style

Why is it standard for a book's notes to be placed at the very end of the book—book endnotes—while only a small minority of books place each chapter's notes at the end of each respective chapter—chapter endnotes? Least common of all is the placement of notes at the bottom of each relevant page—footnotes.

It seems to me the closer to the actual reference a note is, the more convenient to the reader. Yet from my experience authors (publishers?) almost always place them at the end of the entire book.

Is there a reason for this practice?

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@Carla500

@Carla500

I think it really depends on the type of book and the nature of the note. You will find, for instance, that many textbooks have the notes directly in the margins, rather than at the end of the book, the end of the chapter, or even the end of the page. But, in these cases, the nature of the note is often integral to the understanding of the text--for instance, it might be a definition of a key term, or a cross-reference to an earlier concept.

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