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Just because you’ve told me something, it doesn’t mean I now know it for evermore.
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Just because you’ve told me something, it doesn’t mean I now know it for evermore.
Closely related to the conduit or container metaphor is what we might term the ‘reader as data terminal’ model. This is the assumption that people remember everything they read, so it never needs to be repeated or explained again.
Organisations are guilty of this when they put things in the terms and conditions, then never mention them again until you trip up and fall foul of their rule.
The assumption that readers are input devices for streams of transmitted data is enshrined in certain editorial practices.
For example, the use of ‘op. cit.’ in footnoting assumes that the reader can remember a previously cited reference, even when it was first mentioned many pages previously. It also assumes the reader knows what op. cit means (it’s short for ‘opere citato’ which is Latin for ‘in the cited work’). So that’s two bads then.
What’s the cure? Just in time information – tell people what they need to know when they need it, and therefore when its relevance will be clear.