Getting Started in Topic-Based Authoring

Topic-based authoring is the next new thing in technical communication. It lets you create and reuse content, reduces project schedules, and improves your workflow. If you are looking to move to a structured writing environment such as DITA, it's the first set of steps towards that goal.

But how to get started? What's a topic? What to do with your legacy content? How exactly do you plan this new way of developing content? How long will it take to see reduced project schedules? What skills do you need to make this move? And how will this help your users?

For the answers to these questions and more, join Sharon Burton for the certificate course Topic-Based Authoring, consisting of six sessions on Tuesdays between 3 April and 8 May, from 10:30 AM-Noon EDT (GMT-4). You'll end the course fully armed to make this move as painlessly as possible in your workplace, armed with best practices regardless of the tools you use.

Each week includes at least an hour lecture and as well as assignments and readings to do in your own time that support the lecture for that week. Sharon will use activities and hands-on exercises to help you apply the guidelines and ideas presented.

One Reply to “Getting Started in Topic-Based Authoring”

  1. I wouldn’t call topic-based authoring the “next new thing” as I’ve been doing it for my entire career. It was old hat to me when I went to an Information Mapping briefing back in 1997. The reuse and so forth hints at single-sourcing, and DITA is just one structured framework for executing a single-source strategy. That said, this should be a good course for those new to the practice, and Sharon’s an excellent one to lead the course.

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