Over the past couple of weeks you have probably [read about the em dash](http://www.slate.com/id/2295413/) — I’m not giving it up — and [about logical punctuation](http://www.slate.com/id/2293056/). Those two posts address a lot of the grammar complaints I get on the blog — and rightfully so. The one complaint left (besides spelling) that I get a lot, is also one of the first complaints I received: footnotes.

I know how footnotes are *supposed* to work, but I choose to ignore all rules on them. I use footnotes as I see fit.

Sometimes that means that I write asides in footnotes, sometimes I make disclaimers, sometimes I just write odd weird things. None of that really matters, what does matter is this: I try to write all footnotes so that the reader loses nothing if they don’t read my footnotes.

So if my footnoting annoys you, you *should* be fine if you just skip past them.