Attributions and Footnotes

[Christoph Freitag]

>

> From: Aaron Swartz <me at aaronsw.com>

> Subject: Asterisk footnotes

>

>> "Now is the time for all good men to light the wick of their candle 

>> with my own

>> without the aide of government sponsorship."

>>

>>  - Thomas Jefferson

> and the attribution becomes a bullet point.


I have seen people sign their emails like this, sometimes even using 
two dashes. This could actually be the solution. Example:

	... and this then is the end of my email or the quote.

	-- Bill

If you use SmartyPants this is rendered as I think you had in mind.

On the other hand, we may not actually need that. If you look how John 
Gruber signes his mails ("-J.G." at the beginning of the line): There 
is no clash with Markdown, but no styling either. But then: How would 
you style attributions anyway?



>  But even more frequent is this:

>

>> But most of all, samy is my hero*. As if you didn't know! Heh.

>> It's not like anybody's telling me to say this, you know. I really

>> think that.

>>

>> * samy may not actually be my hero.

>

> and the asterisk footnote becomes a bullet point.

>

This is a completely different story. There has been discussion going 
on how to include footnotes, and finally, I think, people will have to 
start using what Markdown provides for rather than the simple but 
ambiguous syntax above. By the way it doesn't even seem very intuitive, 
at least to me. 1)

1) I'd rather use this form, if you see what I mean.

-- c.f