Agree that cued FNs would often be useful innovation I’ve not yet seen. Nevertheless, this statement
So, if you wonder whether you’d care for the content of a note, you have to look at the note, switching to the bottom of the page and breaking your focus. Thus the notion that footnotes are optional is an illusion.
ends with a false conclusion; most footnotes in text I have read were optional and I’m convinced I’m happy to not have read most of them indeed. FNs, already as they are, are thus indeed highly “optional” and potentially very helpful—in many, maybe most, cases, for many, maybe most, readers.
Agree that cued FNs would often be useful innovation I’ve not yet seen. Nevertheless, this statement
ends with a false conclusion; most footnotes in text I have read were optional and I’m convinced I’m happy to not have read most of them indeed. FNs, already as they are, are thus indeed highly “optional” and potentially very helpful—in many, maybe most, cases, for many, maybe most, readers.
wikipedia articles sometimes distinguish notes and references within the label ([Note 5] versus [5]), e.g. here.