On Friday, 27 January 2017 at 12:02:01 UTC, Chris wrote:
Yes, you are right of course. In a perfect world we'd just
write a text and give the odd reference. Unfortunately, anyone
who writes an M.A., M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis has to reference
everything. Not even the most basic concept can be mentioned
without referencing a book written by some professor(s). If a
student writes "1 + 1 = 2" s/he has to reference it with a
footnote à la "[1] Smith, T. & Wesson, J. Basic Concepts of
Arithmetics - An Introduction. Cambridge, 2001."
If you fail to do so, they will grill you. I know, it's
ridiculous. Having said this, depending on the topic, you do
need to insert footnotes - either to guide / help your readers
or to shut up potential critics :-)
Law articles are the worst with footnotes. Sometimes they'll have
a whole page of footnotes with like one line of text at the top.
