Words on a page

As a technical writer, something that I often hear is that no one reads the documentation. Getting users to do that is difficult, especially if you have a large and complex product with a thick manual. This posting at the Creating Passionate Users blog offers some interesting tips on how to get users to actually use documentation.

One of the tips is to separate a manual into the following sections:

• Reference Guide


• Tutorial


• Learning/Understanding


• Cookbook/Recipe


• Start Here
  

That can make for a big guide. Many companies break those sections out into smaller guides and/or a set of knowledge base articles. The advantage to having all of that information in one place is that it's in one place. Readers don't have to search around for what they want to know. On the negative side, in many cases you wind up with what a former co-worker called a monolithic tome.

So, how do you structure your documentation? Leave a comment.