[emidln]

As an aside, why add footnotes with misc words/brands rather than numbers?

[qwery]

Happy to answer, I hope this quick list will be satisfactory despite its messiness:

- numbers make the order (more) significant, making reordering the text more costly

- compared to numbers, words are often easier to spot and jump to

- compared to numbers, the words have some connection to the point (not saying I do this perfectly!) so you don't have to remember which (number) footnote you were looking for

- ADHD

- herbalessence because coriander is a herb, and Maybe some people even have coriander scented soap

- daftpunk because 'Around the World (around the world)'

[darby_nine]

> compared to numbers, words are often easier to spot and jump to

Symbols I'd agree with, but words blend together the same way numbers do for me. Words just aren't visually distinctive enough.

Long live *, †, and ‡!

[gopher_space]

It's a fun style of writing OP probably grew up reading, Terry Pratchett is a good example. They're asides.

[smeej]

Thank you! I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on with the bracketed words.

I didn't try very hard, because the post was already heavy down voted and I thought maybe there just wasn't much sense to be made of it, but I'm glad someone explained.

Suffice it to say I would rather deal with numbers out of order than random words.