Fashioning Style Guides for Your Technical Communications Team
Presentation Abstract
Having problems with inconsistently written documentation? Is there a distinct difference in the tone along with the look-and-feel of your user manuals? If so, then you need to develop a style guide for your technical writing team, in order to produce more consistent documentation. Keith Schengili-Roberts (IXIASOFT) talks about what they are, why you need them and how to get started in creating one. While not focusing exclusively on DITA, Keith will also talk about why a separate DITA style guide—for the consistent expression of your content at the XML-level—should also be considered a requirement for any technical communications team working with this standard.
What can attendees expect to learn?
While DITA and content reuse can help ensure content consistency, having a style guide is a sure way to provide your technical writing team with the information they need to provide a consistent tone in the documentation they produce. This presentation focuses on the foundations and resources to help build two distinct types of style guides: one for general writing purposes, and the other for proper coding in DITA XML.
Meet the Presenter
Keith is the DITA Evangelist and Market Researcher at IXIASOFT. Keith is also an award-winning lecturer on Information Architecture at the University of Toronto’s School for Continuing Education. He is the Chair of the OASIS DITA Adoption Committee, and can often be found presenting at conferences, working with customers, and researching how DITA is being used. Keith’s popular industry blog DITAWriter.com has become a focal point on DITA resources. Connect with Keith on Twitter @KeithIXIASOFT.