Went from skimming everything to actually reading footnotes after a college talk

I used to blow through history sources just grabbing the main text. Then last semester a professor at Camden County College spent 20 minutes showing us how much context is buried in footnotes. She pulled up a primary source from 1912 and the footnote had a whole argument about why the author was biased. Now I check footnotes first before even reading the body. It feels like cheating but it works. Anyone else get turned onto a research habit that changed how you read?

2 comments

2 Comments

blakem8213d ago

1912 footnotes are basically Twitter drama from a century ago.

drew79113d ago

Does that mean we've just been doing the same thing with different tools this whole time, @blakem82? lol. It's funny because you see it everywhere now too. People get into these huge fights over tiny details and it just blows up into something way bigger than it needs to be. I swear, half the time it's not even about the footnote or the tweet, it's just people wanting to feel right about something.