This week I’ve been thinking about footnotes. In case it isn’t clear enough from my output, I love to use them in my essays.
I did my degree in the early 2000s, in what was then the excellent Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths, University of London,1 where the tutors were very open-minded and encouraging, and the academic boundaries loose. Since at that time I was learning to write in English, I had no choice but to experiment. It was through this experimentation that I discovered the creative potential of footnotes, which until then I had only associated with intellectual red tape. Needless to say, it doesn’t need to be this way.
So here are some ways you can use them creatively in your non-fiction work.