What an Accountant can teach a Technical Author about single sourcing

Many people struggle to see the difference between cutting and pasting and true single sourcing. It’s difficult to come up with an analogy that people understand. One way is to compare single sourcing to accountancy, and look at the impact financial software has had on book-keeping and accounting. Before the days of computers, companies would… Read more »

The infinitely reusable document

Alongside Education and Publishing, Design is a profession from whom Technical Communicators can learn a great deal. The BBC TV series, The Genius of Design, looked at new trends towards green, “cradle to cradle”, design, where components in objects are designed to be capable of being stripped down and reused infinitely. I’ve never head anyone… Read more »

Technical writing company creates single source cost reduction calculator

We’ve added a further simple online calculator to the Cherryleaf Web site. This one is for calculating the potential savings in support costs derived from a single sourcing content management system. See our Single Source Cost Reduction Calculator page. We’re also developing a more comprehensive spreadsheet to help you measure the value of documentation. Contact… Read more »

Your future as a republisher

Visualisation Magazine has created a diagram showing how you can use Web 2.0 tools to increase the number of readers of your content – “building an online presence”. It shows the extent to which content can be republished today, through free sites, Web feeds and embedded content. It also shows how you can monitor and receive statistical information on its progress. So why keep… Read more »

Manager’s guide to single sourcing: What’s the problem, why is there a need?

I thought it might be useful to look at a simple question: Why is there a need for single sourcing technical documentation? For people who aren’t technical authors, it’s often unclear why technical authors talk so much about “single sourcing”. Isn’t that just cutting and pasting? What’s the problem? In later posts we’ll look at the… Read more »