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I've been reading Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, which is a fascinating book with a lot of interesting things to say. He essentially argues that the design of an object should naturally inspire the use of the object. Easy things should be easily accomplished; and hard tasks shouldn't be impossible. (Or: what's the pain-in-the-ass factor for using the device? Are you changing yourself to better use it, instead of the other way around?) I highly recommend the book; everyone who creates things that other people use should read it.
That being said, it's pretty ironic that the book has a huge number of end notes, and only half of those notes are merely cites. The other half are expository digressions that often add quite a bit of context to the main body. And they're in the back of the book. Where you can't see them. So, when you come across an endnote number in the main text, you have absolutely no way of knowing if it's worth stopping, paging to the back, figuring out where the notes for this chapter are, and finding the note in question.
Read your own damn book. You could have (a) used footnotes intead of endnotes, (b) used a different symbol set to indicate the difference between cites and supporting text, or (c) not tried to be so goddamned cute and just integrated the extra text into the main body. I gave up on the endnotes by the third chapter, even though they clearly added to the work.
Update: Chapter 7, Note 11 addresses this. But still not to my satisfaction. 10:42:21 AM () 
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