Sometimes, particularly in didactic material, it helps to explain things in more than one way, as different people may find different explanations helpful.
As they say every rule has its exceptions and I think all three variants can be suitable.
If two examples help, use two examples. There’s no need to call out that the second one is another example; people will get that.
At least that’s how I see it after a lifetime of trying to stamp out this kind of filler language in my own writing.
The executives and the sponsors care about business objectives and they are going to zone out as soon as you start getting into the weeds.
> Like almost all rules, there are cases where breaking them is a good idea and seasoned writers may well object with "but" responses for some of these. Thus, consider the rules below as mental rumble strips - you should probably slow down and think if you encounter these cases.
Tell them what you are going to tell them.
Tell them what you want to tell them.
Tell them what you just told them.
"Hi, today I'm going to tell you about 1+1... 1+1=2... So what have we talked about? I started by telling you that 1+1=2."
So much waffle.
The best presentations I've heard don't do that at all. Yes they start by setting the context and goal of the presentation, and they end with a solid conclusion. But they don't have a table of contents at the start that people tediously read and then exactly the same thing again at the end.
You might argue that that's not what it's meant to mean, but that is what people hear so it's bad advice.
The best advice I've ever heard for presenting was from a stand up comedian who was teaching how to present well. His basic advice was to follow the classic Hero's Tale. Set the stage. Something goes wrong. You triumphantly overcome it.
You might think that doesn't apply to technical presentations but you'd be surprised how often you can fit your story into that framework.
Ie “STAR format”
In the hero's tale it kind of starts of happy and then something goes wrong. STAR misses out half of the story. It's like if Shrek started just before the wedding with a narrative explanation of the problem Shrek was trying to solve.
I think tables of content are great for live presentations, especially if your slides have some indicator where we are currently. It's just too easy to get lost or slide away, especially in engaging and thought provoking presentations. That way I can get back to where we are, where we come from and where we're headed.
But I agree that it's super annoying to actually present that stuff multiple times. It should be a navigational device, not content.
My writing is also aimed at different audiences simultaneously. I have to address the same subject different ways.
‘Each paragraph should have a lead sentence summarizing its content. If this doesn't work naturally, the paragraph is probably too short.’