Anthony Grafton has written a fascinating history of annotation that shows how central that practice is to all historical
scholarship. He demonstrates that "in the course of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, . . . a long series of
debates and discussions among writers, translators, and printers gradually yielded something like the modern system of documentation--even
if the process did not then reach, and still has not reached, completion. Across Europe, writers and publishers collaborated
more intensively than ever before, trying to make every aspect of the physical presentation of text mirror and guide the reader
through its content. A revolution in book design took place, as those concerned with authorship and publication carried out
experiments in layout and design, trying to make books physically as well as intellectually accessible."
"Historians continued to believe in the moral and literary virtue of a clear, instructive narrative, but also cherished a
newer desire for critical discussion of the sources." (220)
"Wise historians know that their craft resembles Penelope's art of weaving: footnotes and text will come together again and
again, in ever-changing combinations of patterns and colors. Stability is not to be reached. Nonetheless, the culturally contingent
and eminently fallible footnote offers the only guarantee we have that statements about the past derive from identifiable
sources. . . . Only the use of footnotes enables historians to make their texts not monologues but conversations, in which
modern scholars, their predecessors, and their subjects all take part." (223)
"Sadly, the footnote's rise to the status of standard scholarly tool has been accompanied--in many cases--by its stylistic
decline to a list of highly abbreviated archival citations." (228)
"Only the use of footnotes enables historians to make their texts not monologues but conversations, in which modern scholars,
their predecessors, and their subjects all take part." (234)
