Every Page Is Page One: Topic-Based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web

The Web changes how people use content; not just content on the Web, but all content. If your content is not easy to find and immediately helpful, readers will move on almost at once. We are all children of the Web, and we come to any information system, including product documentation, looking for the search box and expecting every search to work like Google. There is no first, last, previous, next, up, or back anymore. Every Page is Page One.

For technical communicators, this Every Page is Page One environment presents a unique challenge: How do you cover a large and complex product using only topics, and how do you enable your readers to find and navigate topic-based content effectively?

In this ground-breaking book, Mark Baker looks beyond the usual advice on writing for the Web, and beyond the idea of topic-based writing merely as an aid to efficiency and reuse, to explore how readers really use information in the age of the Web and to lay out an approach to planning, creating, managing, and organizing topic-based documentation that really works for the reader.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter I. Content in the Context of the Web
Chapter 2. Include it all. Filter it afterward.
Chapter 3. The Distributed Nature of Content on the Web
Chapter 4. Information Architecture Top Down
Chapter 5. Information Architecture Bottom Up
Chapter II. Characteristics of Every Page is Page One Topics
Chapter 6. What is a Topic?
Chapter 7. EPPO Topics are Self-contained
Chapter 8. EPPO Topics have a Specific and Limited Purpose
Chapter 9. EPPO Topics Conform to a Type
Chapter 10. EPPO Topics Establish their Context
Chapter 11. EPPO Topics Assume the Reader is Qualified
Chapter 12. EPPO Topics Stay on One Level
Chapter 13. EPPO Topics Link Richly
Chapter III. Writing Every Page is Page One Topics
Chapter 14. Writing Every Page is Page One Topics
Chapter 15. Every Page is Page One Topics and the Big Picture
Chapter 16. Sequence of Tasks vs. Sequence of Topics
Chapter 17. EPPO and Minimalism
Chapter 18. Structured Writing
Chapter 19. Metadata
Chapter 20. Linking
Chapter 21. Reuse
Chapter 22. Making the Case for Every Page is Page One
Chapter 23. Afterword: EPPO, but Not for Everything
Appendix A. Copyright and Legal Notices