BABBLE/BABEL /BATTLE OF THE PAGE

B. (aka Bodytext): This text is not so much about running headlines, though. It's about text itself as This is a text about text, the most important tool of modern communication. I would like to introduce myself at this point. I'm generally referred to as bodytext. Some people call me running text, which is also fine. I am the largest and most important part of a text. This precedence has tradition and is generally excepted and acted upon by practitioners.

R.C. (aka References and Citations): Like writers, editors, book designers and typographers. Or typesetters, how they were called back then, when every single letter had to be set by hand, on these lovely old letterpresses.

B. (aka Bodytext): Yes, times are changing. But the traditional hierarchical structure of the text has been there for generations. Despite of some acts of demoralization. Well, every constitution had it's rebels, right? Happens in the best families... Some tried to undermine the traditional auhority by over-emphasizing or extending the scope of secondary information.

F. (aka Footnotes): Secondary information. Pure prejudice.

R.C. (aka References and Citations): Yes, it's a pity! Some authors just treat us wrong and regard the margins as the perfect site to prod to their literacy. I just don't see their point... And I won't be a party to that. Nohow...

F. (aka Footnotes): As a matter of fact, we are not there for distraction, intrusion or showing off. We can even work as a powerful literary device! To create a critical discourse. Or a parallel narrative. There by, we are often more intricate, artful, funny than the bodytext itself.

R.C. (aka References and Citations): Consider David Foster Wallace... Can you imagine, N.? The two of us in the Lobster piece? What a show...! We'd make it big, wouldn't we...?

F. (aka Footnotes): Hold your horses, R.C. Just in case you didn't realize yet: this is serious matter. After all, it is not least us who situate the authors work within a larger conceptual framework. Secondary information... Pfff. We are way to important to leave it at that... Think of the role citation plays in film, painting, or music...

R.C. (aka References and Citations): As also noted by Paul D. Miller AKA DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid in his essay "DJ-ing is writing / Writing is DJ-ing" in Put About: A Critical Anthology of Independent Publishing (London, Book Works, 2004). A really nice piece. He is a DJ and a writer and explores the...

F. (aka Footnotes): It's great that you enjoyed Miller's essay, R., but that's a different story. Could you please stay on track here?... Where was I? ... Right, situating the authors work within a larger conceptual framework, we play a very important role in regard to the author's critical position...

B. (aka Bodytext): It would be great if I could get a word in edgeways. I am the main body of text! May I take the liberty to point out that intertextuality...

R.C. (aka References and Citations): A term coined by French linguist and literary theorist Julia Kristeva.

B. (aka Bodytext): ... isn't exclusively due to more or less clearly marked references. I, too, am based on a perpetual interplay with subtexts, references and citations. Notes and references also appear as integrative parts of the bodytext. You two adorn yourself with borrowed plumes here (...)