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[Starver]

Starver, I... Why are you using footnotes? You're very organized about your posting. 

It's more confusing to me that he didn't ^superscript / _subscript them.

Blame my old Usenetting habits.  With plain ascii, no markup, I still have to try to remember to use [I][/I] instead of indicating /Italics/ by other means.  Similar reason for the [ROT13]¹ing and general aversion to mentioning Fpvragbybtl... <sup>4

1</sup> (Better?⁴) although that's more traditionally <angle-bracketed>², I did somehow remember to change that to [square-bracket] format for forum-code.

² At least it was once the Web³ was invented...  I can't remember any more what we did before the pretend-HTML came into being...

³ And I mean Web, not Internet, before anybody says anything.  New fangled thing.  That and Gopher. ⁴

edit: ⁴ At each of these points, I had placed an   Honestly, I hate that I put too many smileys in my writing.  When they're plain-text, they're not as intrusive, but when they turn into images, they get annoying to me when I re-read.  Yet I don't want to use the full "[ ] Don't use smileys." option...  See, my heart is rent in twain with all these editing decisions!⁴

[ein]

Why not disable smilies in your prefs?
Then you can use the better looking text ones.

Only reason I don't is because none of the ones I use are available as images, such as D:.

[Starver]

Why not disable smilies in your prefs?
Then you can use the better looking text ones.

The odd one aint so bad, like I said.  The rest is the pains of self-editing ones own work, and dissatisfaction at the inability to avoid repetition and be succinct, non-repetitive, uncomplicated, non-procrastinative, avoid repeating oneself, and, when it comes down to it, brief and to the point...  And to avoid repeats of any previously expounded information or theme, over and over and over again.

(And does them being turned off for you make 'em a global off in any message you send for everyone else who reads them?)

But this is way off the subject of the colour blue!

Tangents-Я-Me.

[Grakelin]

You know what's more annoying than a bunch of smilies?

Putting footnotes in your footnotes.

[Starver]

You know what's more annoying than a bunch of smilies?

Putting footnotes in your footnotes.

I didn't mean to turn this thread into a forum for my own personal style guide (the one that I follow, not one that I expect anyone else to), but I thought I might as well say, while the spotlight is upon me...

Noting that I do all of the following (as needs must), footnotes from footnotes are there to do the same as footnotes from body... allow a thought to continue in a far less interupted manner than trying to insert sub-clauses or parenthises, and let the reader work their own way around the text according to preference.

Multi-levelled parenthesising gets confusing.  It's even harder to do with comma-bounded sub-clauses, especially where 3-or-more-item lists also utilise the comma device.


I know I write too much.  I know I over-use all the above devices.  I admit that I will even resort to the (far more annoying, whether you're annoyed by basic footnotes or not) cyclic or even self-recursive footnoting when it serves a useful purposes (though that may boil down to just dry humour, at times).

But what I'll try never to do is create back-references (cyclic ones, aside, where that's obviously unavoidable).  Low footnote numbers precede higher ones, in the main text.  Less stringent is what I do with sub-footnotes, and may either run them straight on as the next number from the 'calling' one (requiring a skip of digit in the text) or keep the text ones sequential and place 'f2f' ones beyond.  Occasionally I'll use [1a] as a footnote to [1], though.  It largely depends on what order might thoughts have come out and how much effort it takes to renumber all the existing feetnete once an additional point has been inserted into the dialogue during editing.

(Yes, editing.  I do often edit, and re-edit my posts.  Sometimes as much editing out as editing further points in, but I often end up with a large amount of text before I start, so it's not noticable.  And it probably doesn't look like I edit it at all, but that's probably because the edits are as much a Stream Of Consciousness as the original blah-blah-blah that eminates from my fingers onto the keyboard.  Would it surprise you that this post has been edited?  And two entire paragraphs removed, even as I (re-)write this particular chunk of text?)


And if I end up with a multi-paragraph footnote, you'll note I'll occasionally use the pseudo-tagging "[1] para para para[/1]" type of format to differentiate from "[2] single-line", etc.  But I acknowledge that this often shows up the flaws in my mental structuring of the post.



I ardently resolved to avoid all actual feetnete in this post.  Even for example purposes.  Maybe it reads better because of this.  But, knowing my tendency to ramble, it almost certainly still does not read particularly intelligable or intelligent...

It certainly is OOC.  Yet creating a new thread to talk about this would seem to be hubris in itself, so I'll let the above splurge stand and hope that I see no further need to drown you in any further detailing of all my internal mental processes.