I've never understood the pre-summarization technique. I've had lecturers constantly state what they intend to say so much that its a distraction. When I see this style of writing I glaze over as well.
You haven't been spending too much time with COOs, CAE, CCOs, and other Cxx's. They need the executive summary (pre-summarization).
Some of the C-folk like:
-single line (title)
-one liner (more than 5 words but less than 20 words)
-short paragraph (2-4 lines)
-perhaps a RAG or something visual that will show sentiment (if/where appropriate)
and they won't read past that.
So when (I) write documentation/report/what-have-you I need to make one document for all audiences, the Cxx with 1-minute to spend and the actual target/doer that will spend X-days following up the darn thing.
You pre-summarize, because you tell someone something, you tell them why you are telling them. So they can judge whether it is worth reading on. And to tell someone why, you have to state in a sentence or two what you are going to tell them.
The good thing about technical documents is that you can just skip the parts you don't want to read. But it is there for the people who do want to.
