There are a lot of pointless notes in the ASV, such as in Genesis 41 where the ears of corn are called ‘rank[b] and good,’ where rank is stated as meaning ‘fat’ in Hebrew. I think it is better to just pick a more sensible word (here ‘bountiful’) than to have a note explaining ‘fat’. In any case I have come up with a process for examining all of the ASV or other notes; since they are given as footnotes before the word, then in all cases where I have moved the footnote to the end of the word they have been examined; in other cases they have not yet been examined.

I do expect the majority of such notes will be removed in the third (theological) pass, as most of them seem to have no real purpose other than to give an alternate wording that means essentially the same thing. I am not sure if this was laziness on the part of the ASV revisers or if they genuinely put effort into choosing a sensible word, but ‘word choice’ is not my primary concern for a notes section.

Another great example of this kind of pointless note is verse 41:13. The note reads better than the original text! So the text has been replaced with a wording similar to the note, and the note has been removed. I feel this provides a better reading experience and gives the notes section more value as an uncluttered resource.