From DFW’s Consider the Lobster: (1) “Do not presume that the reader can read your mind.” You must provide the reader with enough information to visualize or consider or conclude that which you want to share. (2) Do not presume that the reader feels the same way as you do about a given experience or issue.” Or, in his strangely translated explanation, never use the conclusion as an assumption to prove the conclusion (p. 106, FN 59).

The cause of both of these freshman English errors is the writer’s self absorption, the inability to separate oneself from the reader, viz., a disbelief in the otherness of the reader.