On academic footnotes

Reading up on some language stuff, thanks to hearing about Rachel Jeantel and the controversy about whether or not she's using "correct english". I've got the latter half of her testimony up on youtube right now (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xLN1zEbUOQ) but I should probably check out the first half to really see what the deal is- probably she'd get more than yes or no questions, and I wouldn't be surprised if she was advised to change how she spoke during the break between testimonies.

But what I've heard so far, she has a problem enunciating, and that's it.

As an aside- how much does it suck to have to give testimony about the day a friend of yours died, when that friend is, according to the Zimmerman defence, accused of, what, attacking Zimmerman? She's being asked questions, by the defence, specifically to attempt to discredit her friend, Treyvon Martin. Again, that really sucks.

Presumably that first half of the interview was the prosecution interviewing her.

Regardless, I wanted to post this paragraph that contains some footnote info that I'd never learned before, from this site: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003588.html

"There are some things that look superficially like prescriptivism but aren't. One of these is lamenting the loss of a useful distinction. For example, a pet peeve of mine is the incorrect use of abbreviations in footnotes in scholarly writing. All too often nowadays I see v., cf., and viz used as if they all meant "see". Traditionally, these have three distinct meanings. The only one that means "see" is v., an abbreviation for vide. cf. stands for confer "compare". It is appropriately used when you want to point the reader to a contrasting view or approach.viz is properly used to indicate that the following items constitute an exhaustive list. People seem either to think that it is an alternative way of saying "see" or that it is an alternative to e.g.. (Note, by the way, that there is no period after viz. That is because it stands for videlicet and the z itself is taken to show that it is an abbreviation.)"