ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Cross-reference

Cross-referencing is like connecting dots between different things. Imagine you have a book and you want to find a specific topic like "dogs". The book might have many pages that talk about dogs but you don't want to read all of them. Instead, you can use the index at the back of the book to find which pages talk about dogs. The index does this by cross-referencing - it connects the topic "dogs" to different pages in the book.

This makes finding information a lot easier because you don't have to read through everything to find what you want. Cross-referencing can also be used in other places, like a website or a document. For example, if you're reading a scientific paper and they mention a study that they used to support their argument, they might tell you where to find that study by giving you a cross-reference like "see Jones et al., 2018". This means that you can look up the specific study and read it for yourself to better understand the argument.

Overall, cross-referencing helps us connect the dots between different pieces of information, making it easier to find what we need and understand how things are related.