ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Convention of consistency

Have you ever played a game where you have to follow certain rules in order to win? The convention of consistency is kind of like that. It means that when you start something, you should try to stick to the same rules or way of doing things throughout.

Let's say you're coloring a picture. You might decide to color in everything with a certain color first, and then go back and add in details with different colors. That's great! But if halfway through the picture, you decide to start coloring in a different way - maybe you switch to coloring everything in stripes instead of blocks - it might be harder to finish the picture and make it look nice.

So, the convention of consistency just means that it's usually easier and better to stick to the same rules or ways of doing things, especially if you want to end up with a good result at the end.