A bit of a meta writing question, but hoping to get your input on this.
For rmarkdown templates that allow for both footnotes and asides (page gutter) like Tufte handouts, tint, distill etc, what is your heuristic to choose what goes into the footnote and what goes into the aside (and why does it not go into the main text)?
(I am not an academic, so forgive me if this is an obvious question for people regularly engaged in scientific and technical writing)
I am no source of authority on this, but on blogs, I see folks generally placing in the aside short & simple eye-catching, summarizing, provocative, or just interesting stand-alone elements. While footnotes receive citations and/or longer digressions.
I feel that this is motivated by the fact that asides are higher up and more visible, and so they might be used to catch the attention of the reader. Footnotes are more hidden away, and so seem to be used to store info the author wants to include in the article but distracts from the main text's pacing.
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