The idea of structured authoring can be confusing to begin with, but once it is implemented effectively and in its most accessible form, it can save you a great deal of time and resources.
Structured authorship is increasingly used in technical writing documents, and there are several reasons for this.
Updated specs
If you are doing technical writing as part of a car manufacturing process, for example, you may have multiple documents, all related to a certain area, such as engine size.
If the designers of the car decided to modify the specifications of the engine, then all the other documentation, which can be hundreds of documents, would have to be updated manually to be correct.
By using an XML framework, it can be configured to have one source of information and just by modifying this section all other documents are automatically updated, saving you what could be a huge amount of painstaking work.
Make sure the information is up to date
Technical writing, by definition, must be more accurate than most other forms of writing, so ensuring that the information provided is correct is of the utmost importance.
Not only can outdated information appear unprofessional from a customer’s point of view, it can also have huge ripple effects when used in technical writing.
Reusable happy
Being able to easily reuse content is important when designing an efficient content management system for a business or organization.
While other forms of content may also use sections such as disclaimers, legal notices, and terms of use, when it comes to technical writing, there is much more information that will be repeated from the above content, that you can use.
By allowing each of these sections to be modified from a single source of information, you can reuse this information simply by entering this field in your new technical writing document.
Content management
As an increasing amount of information is more easily stored electronically, ensuring you have the right content management system to deal with this will become an increasingly important task.
The technical writing industry is no different, and by embracing the structured authoring and ideas of the XML framework, companies can manage their content competently and efficiently.
The use of meta tags and other identifying information allows for easy storage and use, ensuring that the author can easily search for certain documents or sections. This becomes incredibly useful when you add content to a new document, which you know exists elsewhere.