Report Report Report

Nancy Allison maker at verizon.net
Mon Feb 5 08:48:06 MST 2007


I'm working on a manual that describes the reports generated by the application. The reports are provided in either Excel or PDF format, and indeed each report is titled "Something Blah Blah Report."

Therefore, formally, the title always includes the term "Report," which then gets repeated ad nauseam throughout the document. Example:

Chapter 7: Pie-Baking Reports

There are five types of pie-baking reports:

---Apple Pie Report
---Cinnamon Streudel Report
---Pizza Pie Report
---Clam Pie Report
---Rocks 'n' Stuff Report

Then, each subsection has the title of the report, including the word "Report," and the first sentence of each section inevitably repeats the report name, including the capitalized word "Report."

Is it acceptable to drop "Report" from the initial bulleted list and the title of each subsection, and lowercase it in the text where it does occur? Just to give the reader a break? , So, the example would say, 

There are five types of pie-baking reports:

---Apple Pie 
---Cinnamon Streudel 
 
etc., etc.

Or should I stick with the strictly accurate -- after all, no one is going to read this document like a novel, so presumably no one will get sick of reading the word over and over. Maybe I am aware of the repetition only because I'm working on the doc.





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