Clear but inelegant writing of maths – should I care?

Happy New Year, folks.

I’m (still) editing a paper that is mostly stuff from my PhD and I saw the following phrase, which I had forgotten writing:

… equivalence classes with respect to equivalence.

UGH! That’s not nice, is it? The equivalence relation is established (although not quite unanimously so) under the name “equivalence” in this context. Also there is another equivalence relation that I will be using on the same class of objects (so can’t refer to “the equivalence class” without ambiguity).

The question is, should I care? It’s perfectly clear. People don’t read maths papers for the joy of the prose (although very occasionally it is a nice extra). Does this sort of thing matter?

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