Footnotes for everything.

Footnotes. So much easier; so much more frequently read.

footnotes for actual commentary. Endnotes for source notation.

Foot. Forever.

Put me down for footnotes.

end of chapter notes. Best of both worlds.

I always prefer those. That said, Jared if 60% of your notes are sarcastic comments or informative asides, then I think you have to do footnotes so that they will be read along with the text.

In my humble opinion, you don't have a choice. :)

But why isn't Sara's suggestion an option? Do your 60% notes that are comments or asides as footnotes and do all your source citations as endnotes or end of chapter notes. The footnotes could be letters of the alphabet indicating the note for that page (since you will never have more than 26 footnotes on a single page) and the endnotes could be marked with numbers.

Then just tell the reader in your prologue/intro (which footnote/endnote caring people actually read. People who don't care about footnotes and endnotes don't read the prologues anyway.) Explain in the prologue that numbered notes are source citations at the end of the chapter and that lettered notes are footnotes, and explain the distinction and why. And that'll be your chance to say, "Hey read my footnotes. They're good. Really."

Footnotes. I've always suspected that endnotes were invented simply because it used to be so hard to figure line count when writing research papers on a typewriter. But footnotes are easy with word processing, so why not cut the reader a break?

I prefere footnotes what I'm reading isn't so heavily footnoted that the notes routinely take up a quarter or more of the page. In cases where the footnoting is that heavy I prefer endnotes, and I kind of like the compromise that has endnotes placed at the end of each chapter - I'm much more likely to actually read them than if all the endnotes are at the back of the book.

I prefer footnoting, for everything EXCEPT footnotes that are very long.

Sometimes footnotes that are long need to be in the text and other times, they are true asides. But when they are true asides, but very long, it distracts from the normal flow of reading.

I am reading a book right now that has chapter appendices. It's almost as if they've taken the long footnotes and made them more like endnotes (except they call them appendices). They number the appendices by chapter number and decimal points, so the three appendices at the end of chapter 12 would be numbered 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3, for example.

To sum up:
Footnotes all the way unless you have a very long footnote. In that case, create an appendix at the end of the chapter or some other chapter epilogue to flesh out thoughts.

Footnotes, always; in books with endnotes, I wind up running two bookmarks and getting very wearied of flipping back and forth. In books where the endnotes are purely source material, I give up on checking them as I read, and then inevitably find myself wanting to track something down and getting quite frustrated. The only thing worse than endnotes are endnotes in a book where the author(s) figured that because they had endnotes, they could omit the bibliography and index.

Also, in defense of commentary in the footnotes: I was taught by my professors that that's where valuable tangential comments belong, so that they don't snarl the main thread of the text but are still available to readers if they're interested.

Footnotes. Always. Even for the very long ones.

Andrew,

So you're the other person who read that book. Glad to know you.

Jared, if you use endnotes I will cry....alot....and a puppy may die....:(

End notes or foot notes. . . either is fine. Just make them plentiful and meaty and interesting. And by all means avoid in-text citations which disrupt the flow of the prose. (APA style was designed by someone who didn't care about the need for good research to also be a good read.)