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Footnotes matter to historians. They are the humanist's rough equivalent of the scientist's report on data: they offer the empirical support for stories told and arguments presented. Without them, historical theses can be admired or resented, but they cannot be verified or disproved. As a basic professional and intellectual practice, they deserve the same sort of scrutiny that laboratory notebooks and scientific articles receive from historians of science. Anthony Grafton. The Footnote. (vii)

The weapon of pedants, the scourge of undergraduates, the bete noire of the "new" liberated scholar: the lowly footnote, long the refuge of the minor and the marginal, emerges in this book as a singular resource, with a surprising history that says volumes about the evolution of modern scholarship. In Grafton's account, footnotes to history give way to footnotes as history, recounting in their subtle way the curious story of the progress of knowledge in written form.
Grafton treats the development of the footnote-the one form of proof normally supplied by historians in support of their assertions-as writers on science have long treated the development of laboratory equipment, statistical arguments, and reports on experiments: as a complex story, rich in human interest, that sheds light on the status of history as art, as science, and as an institution.