As many of you will know, I have been working for some time on the history of my family. It is my hope, eventually, to glue everything together into a book. During my research I have read many books on English and Irish social history and in doing so I have developed a particular aversion to footnotes* and brackets [of all kinds].
Footnotes* are particularly annoying. I don't mind paragraphs being marked with a superscript number which refers to a list of references at the back of the book which serve to confirm the sources of the information. I do not like long rambling footnotes on each page. If something needs to be said in a rambling footnote, it should be written into the main text. If it can be omitted, then omit it.
I have just been reading a book on mid-Victorian Britain that was rendered unintelligible by strings of brackets - or parenthesis to be accurate. The book explained about many social costs for Britain [including Ireland] and parts of Europe [at least those bits that could directly affect Britain] for a period from 1851 to 1875 [although with some references to earlier and later periods] and the changing attitudes of society [mainly the upper and middle classes] to the working classes [and those parts of other classes that sometimes over-reached into the working classes]. As you can see [at least most of you can see] the net result [in most circumstances] is gibberish, although I rather get the impression [and it is no more than that] that the writer is incapable of sorting out his thoughts [except on the matter of the over use of brackets] and he gives little consideration to the poor reader [or the rich reader for that matter] who [when he may well be over-tired] has to make sense of the stuff. There is many a writer who could gain from reading Fowler's "Modern English Usage" and Sir Ernest Gowers more entertaining "The Complete Plain Words". Sir Ernest is quite clear with his advice. Parenthesis should be used sparingly. He is quite scathing in his criticism. "They enable the writer to dodge the trouble of arranging his thoughts properly." Sometimes the phrases can become so convoluted that all meaning is lost
There is much to be said for short sentences with clear meanings. And I will try to keep this principle permanently in my mind.
* Do not ignore this footnote.
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