Footnotes. Who needs them? You do, for two reasons.

First, footnotes are like a trail of breadcrumbs that a previous researcher left for you. If you’re lucky enough to find a scholarly book about the subject you’re researching, it will have footnotes. Those footnotes will be full of extremely helpful information such as: names of archives and catalog numbers of relevant documents. So while reading this secondary source, make a note of the archives that scholar consulted. You might also want to read some of the other books in the bibliography. If you don’t know where to start, or where to go next, follow the trail of footnotes.

Second, footnotes keep everybody honest. The whole point of footnotes is so that scholars can check up on each other. Don’t think they won’t. One of my professors in grad school became a bit of a celebrity because he traveled from California to Germany to find a document that another historian had used to “prove” his argument. Turned out that other guy had translated the document in the archive but missed the all-important negative. So much for his argument (and his career – grad students take note).

The point of a history book is to tell a story, yes, but more importantly, it’s to make an argument. Maybe the argument is about women’s involvement in the Flemish tapestry industry. Maybe it’s about villager involvement in the Holocaust. Whatever it is, the historian has found original documents, evaluated those documents and reconstructed what happened from those clues. How do we the readers know it’s not just a cleverly disguised fiction? Because of the footnotes. The footnotes are the proof that anyone can verify.

So pay attention to footnotes when you’re doing your own research. And do all your readers a favor by putting footnotes into your own book. It will help them do their research. It will also make your work more solid and more trustworthy.