firecat

I have edited academic publications, and the acknowledgements sections often had funny bits, as described here. So I'm one of the few people who almost always reads the acknowledgements sections of publications.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/27/academics_hide_snarky_clever_comments_in_the_acknowledgments_sections_of.html

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/820922.html

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From:

jae

Huh. In my field, the acknowledgements go in the first footnote, and are therefore kind of obvious.

-J

From:

libskrat

The acknowledgments section of my last one is, um, perhaps unusual. Though it's also tiresome because I really had no choice but to explain the joke, which is never not deadly.

From:

thnidu

I just looked at it. Oh ye gods! I was really wondering about the snarky tone as I skimmed over it, till finally (especially) the Author's Note made it clear.

From:

libskrat

Yup. I tried to write this article in a non-snarky way, like, six different times. None of them gelled; I kept running into "they won't let you say this" and "they wouldn't even let you RESEARCH this."

So I said it a different way because it needed saying. Call it an Indigo-Girls-Galileo moment. ;)

From:

thnidu

Ohh yeah.

From:

thnidu

And on the opposite side of the coin, the Acknowledgements of my dissertation ended with this Latin text:

Et in loco supremo maximas gratias ago Renatae amatissimae, reginae cordis mei, sine qua nihil.

Meaning:

And in the last/highest place, I offer my greatest thanks to my most beloved Rene, without whom there would be nothing.

She was typing it up for me late one night in the department office while I worked on later parts, and our four-year-old daughter, bless her, played quietly on the floor. When she came to that part (she was a double major in Latin and English Lit.) she cried out "Oh, no, I can't type this!"

That was 32 years ago, but the memory is still clear. I lost her 2 years ago; this memory is one of my treasures.