Glossary · Information delivery
Topic-based authoring
Also known as: topic-based writing, topic-oriented writing, modular authoring
In technical communication, topic-based authoring is the practice of writing information as self-contained units called topics, each covering one subject or answering one question, that can be understood with little or no surrounding context and are assembled, reused and delivered separately instead of being written as one continuous document.
- Information architecture
- Technical documentation
In one sentence
Topic-based authoring writes information as self-contained topics, one subject each, that can be reused, assembled and delivered separately.
Example
Instead of a 200-page manual, the team writes separate topics such as “Replacing the sealing jaw” or “Sealing jaw: technical data”, which the CCMS assembles into the manual and delivers one by one to the service app.
How it applies
- The unit: A topic is titled, covers a single subject, and is short enough to stay focused but long enough to make sense on its own. In DITA, the topic is the basic unit of authoring and reuse, and maps assemble topics into deliverables.
- Writing discipline: Topics avoid transitional text such as “as described above” or “now that you have completed the first step”, because they may appear in another order or another deliverable. Navigation and relations are kept outside the topic, in maps or link structures.
- Reuse and variants: The same topic serves several products, deliverables and media. Information typing — concept, task, reference, troubleshooting — keeps topics of the same kind consistent.
- Delivery: Topics become iiRDS topics with metadata for intelligent delivery, and can still be assembled into whole documents for a VDI 2770 handover.
- AI and retrieval: Self-contained topics with metadata are units that retrieval systems can find and quote without losing context — the human counterpart of chunking.
- Safety information: Splitting content into topics must not separate a step from the warning that belongs to it; safety messages stay in the topic where the hazard arises.
Topic-based authoring vs. topic
A topic is the unit; topic-based authoring is the practice of designing, writing and managing content in such units. Structured authoring is related but different: it governs the form of content by rules, whether the unit is a topic or a book.
Document vs. topic
A document is read as a whole and delivered as one file, such as an operating manual in PDF/A. A topic is read and delivered piece by piece. In iiRDS both are information units: an iiRDS Document collects information for one audience and purpose, an iiRDS Topic covers one subject. Topic-based authoring produces topics first and builds documents from them.