IBID

Some people work hard to hide their ignorant moments and I admit, I don't mention plenty, but this friends, is worth sharing.

I tend to read books that have to do with God, religion, church, spiritual things, etc. Recently I've been proud of all the footnotes I've read. I've been noticing them, using them as further reading or resource, or to better understand a word/concept. In the past few books I kept noticing the source of "Ibid." Some of you are already laughing and others of you will have to keep reading to get it, but we won't tell. Anyway, as I came across this consistency in books of somewhat ancient text, my uninformed assumption was that Ibid was some profound, fundamental text that I am ignorant for not knowing about. I mean the kind of text that is so old and significant that it doesn't need any further explanation. So, in the most recent book I began, I saw the fateful reference of Ibid and thought "seriously, what's the deal with this?"

Of course, the most appropriate thing to do was to google it.

This is what I got:

Ibid. (Latin, short for ibidem, "the same place") is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for a source that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. It is similar in meaning to idem (meaning something that has been mentioned previously; the same [1]) abbreviated "Id.," which is commonly used in legal citation.

To find the ibid. source, one has to look at the reference right before it, and so ibid. serves a similar purpose to ditto marks (〃, ", do.).

WOW! I am amazing. If only my English teacher could see me now! Did I mention I tested out of college English? Obviously, I missed some things!