One of the most neglected aspects of the discussion of topic-based writing is that of provenance. Every technical document has provenance of some kind. It may be a highly structured and elaborate provenance, such as certification according to a standard performed by an outside agency, or it may be the implicit provenance of being published… Read More »
I was astonished at Sarah Maddox’s statement, in her guest post Why don’t technical writers use wikis — or do they? on I’d Rather be Writing, that wikis are not good at topic-based writing. Huh? Wikis are all about topic-based writing. In fact, it is the only type of writing they really support. What’s wrong here?… Read More »
Last month I wrote that Every Page is Page One Topics are Everywhere, and I listed the principle characteristics of such topic as I see them. I said I would write in more depth about each of these characteristics. This is the first of those posts, on the standalone property of EPPO topics. The word… Read More »
Many discussions of the advantages or disadvantages of topic-based documentation seem to neglect the different view of the user that is inherent in the move from the traditional textbook style manual to standalone topics. Topics are not simply a new mechanism for composing and constructing documents, nor are they simply about enabling reuse, or about… Read More »
Everyone agrees that we should be writing in topics. (Okay, not everyone, probably, but everyone who is likely to read this blog.) Everyone agrees we should write in topics. But no one agrees on what a topic is. Actually, that’s not entirely true. When asked to describe what a topic is, almost everyone in the… Read More »