Structured content does not kill creativity

Structured content is cooler than you may think. As a model for technical communications, it suffers from several misconceptions which prevent that you and your organization get the most out of it. I’ll debunk a couple of misconceptions that I’ve encountered. Each one presents a learning opportunity where you can show a writer, a subject-matter [...]

Structured content is not just a style guide

Structured content is cooler than you may think. As a model for technical communications, it suffers from several misconceptions which prevent that you and your organization get the most out of it. I’ll debunk some misconceptions that I’ve encountered. They aren’t exactly wrong, but they miss the big picture. So each one presents a learning [...]

Top 4 tactics to structure legacy documentation

The success of a move to topic-based authoring and/or structured writing depends on the order of your steps – and good planning is key. You can’t make it up as you go along. The Company I Work For is moving its extensive user documentation to topic-based authoring and a DITA-compliant information model. That requires converting [...]

When topics don’t quite work

If a topic in your documentation gives you trouble, seems homeless or doesn’t quite “work”, it’s probably because it is mixing topic types. The company I work for has started to roll out topic-based authoring over a year ago. We’ve seen several benefits already: Topics are easier to find and follow for users and more [...]