atw: Duplicating material in procedures [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

I'm currently editing some procedures that have a large amount of common
material. The two procedures are designed to produce the same outcome
but are used in different circumstances. (You follow one for making an
update from a CD/DVD and the other for doing it over the network.)

My first thought, when I realised that there were so many completely
identical steps in these procedures, was to strip out all the common
steps and put them in one place, then direct the reader there when he or
she reaches the appropriate point in either procedure. 

This has obvious advantages from the writer's perspective. It makes it
much easier to maintain and keeps down the overall length of the
document. Also, in this case at least, it avoids repeating the same
screenshots twice each in the document - and hence having a list of
figures that contains quite a few duplicate captions.  

Yet as soon as I thought about it from the reader's perspective I
realised that there were advantages in keeping it as it is, with all the
duplicated text and figures. The reader will probably only need to look
at one of the procedures - why should she or he care what's in the
other? And who wants to jump around in a document to find out what to
do? The bulk of the document could be a disadvantage in some cases, but
in this case the document is actually only fairly short anyway. The
important thing is to make it easy for the reader to find what he or she
wants, then be able to follow it through without too much unnecessary
page-flipping. 

I believe strongly that our job as writers or editors is to make life
easy for the reader, even at the cost of extra work for ourselves. But,
on the other hand, I also recognise that extra work for us can make more
room for mistakes, which could make the reader's life even harder in the
end.

Has anyone else grappled with this issue? 

Howard


==================================
       Howard L. Silcock
        Technical Writer
    Common Services SOE Program
Network Infrastructure Development
       Department of Defence         
         (02) 626 58395  
==================================

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