FOOTNOTES
All right, all right. Even though footnoting is not what research is all about, it’s true that footnotes do frequently turn up in research. So here’s a discussion. The three questions everybody asks about footnoting are (1) whether to, (2) when to, and (3) how to.
Whether to Footnote
Here, as in every other decision you have to make in business report writing, the sole criterion is understandability: will footnotes make the reader more likely to understand your point? If the report is only a memo to your supervisor, and the question you’re answering is a simple factual one where the reliability of your sources isn’t an issue, the answer is no. Footnotes would be unnecessary and just get in the way.
But suppose the report, although still ...
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