Perhaps in keeping with his tendency to voice a world-view quite different from that of John Kenneth Galbraith, his predecessor at Harvard, Greg Mankiw advises students on writing thusly:
Put details and digressions in footnotes. Then delete the footnotes. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-write-well.html
On the other hand, in his book Galbraith wrote 'A Note on Sources:'
In recent times numerous authors and publishers have come to suppose that readers are offended by footnotes. I have no desire to offend or even in the slightest way to discourage any solvent customer, but I regard this supposition as silly. No literate person can possibly be disturbed by a little small type at the bottom of a page, and everyone, professional and lay reader alike, needs to know on occasion the credentials of a fact. Footnotes also provide an exceedlingly good index of the care with which a subject has been researched.
However, there is also a line between adequacy and pedantry. ...
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