Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Stockbridge Truslow: First... there`s not really such a thing as duplicate content. It`s a myth. I won`t go into all the specifics here, but suffice it to say... unless it`s two pages that are exactly the same, they aren`t exactly the same and therefore each can rank for different things based upon what`s different about them.
Now... back to your question...
It depends upon the situation... but I like to repeat headings consistently across sets of pages in certain scenarios.
For example... Say you have a page for each of your products or services. Now... each one of those pages you might have headings that are the same:
Description: Describe the product. Features: List the features. Bullet lists are great, here.
Etc.
By repeating here - it lets Google evaluate the pages in that section as a "set". It can say, "Ahhh. Okay... These are all PRODUCTS and they have a DESCRIPTION and a set of FEATURES"
Now when you add a new product and it sees your list of "Features" under that feature heading, it knows right away - that section is describing specific features of the product.
There are lots of other scenarios where having a page "template" that is laid out consistently across the whole set of pages in that section is a huge benefit. And, of course, the labels (your h tags, really) should be consistent to help label each section for what it represents.