The Honesty of Endnotes

Franken accuses Ann Coulter of lying by using endnotes instead of footnotes. According to Franken, it is dishonest because “endnotes are much harder to reference.” In other words, according to Franken’s hypothesis, endnotes hide information where no one will ever find it.

In reality, it is rare for an author to document their facts as extensively as Coulter did. If one does decide to have extensive notes, like Coulter, footnotes would fill the bottom of each page. Perhaps that would satisfy Franken–for a while at least–but it would be a pain to the casual reader, dealing with hundreds of unsightly notes all over the pages. Eventually, Franken would accuse them of distracting the reader with footnotes to camouflage “lies”.