What does writing for reuse mean to a technical writer? I have lately been thinking about this, and it has also been discussed in the Writing for reuse forum in The Content Wrangler Community.
Well, it means a lot of things, but one implication is that you need to think outside the box. You need to become all-knowing, all-powerful.
When content is not single sourced or not saved in a content management system, designers and writers typically work for a very specific purpose. They are creating a document for:
- A certain product with a distinct feature set
- A certain audience
- A certain deliverable or channel, for example, a printed user guide or online help
- Perhaps also a certain country or market area – often the one where they themselves are located, even if the document is localised globally
When you are writing for reuse, you must suddenly know a lot more. You must know not only one product very well; you must know all the products that may reuse your content, to some extent. The minimum that you must learn is what features (hardware, software, whatever) typically vary between the products. This way, you can create global, generic content that suits all of them, and know where content must be tagged to allow for variation (like discussed in a previous post).
The content may be used for all kinds of audiences. As with any technical writing, it is essential to have a good audience analysis, so that you know who these users are. More importantly, you need to know what their needs are: what information do they require, are there differences in this between the audiences, and how will you accomplish all this in your information design and technical writing?
What may be the most difficult part is that you must rid yourself of your beloved deliverable, a dilemma discussed also by Gordon McLean. Your content must be suitable for various publishing channels (that your team has defined). You cannot let just one format drive your thinking.
For some of us, this literally means stepping out from the sales box into the world wide web of content.
Filed under: content management
LauraK
TanjaK
Good piece Tanja. Re-use is critical to tech writer efficiency - your readers might like to check out Author-it software corporation, the worlds leading supplier of component content management software Also the Content Management systems Blog Cheers!