Sample of writings with long footnotes

[ak71]

Hey all,

I'm preparing my sample of writing for this year's applications round. As it happens, I have so many long footnotes, each of which is going to address some of the advantages of my view over others', or address some caveats or questions in the vicinity. In case it matters, the paper heavily technical logicy stuff, and the majority of the footnotes are very technical as well. I wonder if anyone would actually go through them all in detail, or if this might count as an overall negative factor for my sample. What are your thoughts on this? Any help would be much appreciated.

[Marcus_Aurelius]

I strongly recommend against long footnotes. If an argument is interesting and important enough to go in the main body of your paper, great. Otherwise, cut it (or just gesture at it briefly). Footnotes are often distracting from one's argumentation, and they're important (especially for mentioning relevant literature), but should be kept pretty trim because the writing sample's main goal is to show off your interesting philosophical argumentation.