I’d normally be with you and I call this out as a concern purists would have my article. I’m doing something differently here and maybe more daring — the conceit of this article is that you can learn the entire system in one evening with no prior knowledge of Japanese at all. In that case I think the “s_ + i = shi” is as fine a pedagogical moment as any to introduce why the hiragana table matters. And for readers who already know it, I assume they won’t actually have a problem following the content, setting aside the pedantism and the annoyance at someone seemingly “teaching in English” and “copypasting concepts”. Like I get what you’re saying, I just think that it’s okay to break the rules for what I’m going for here.