Efficient Management, Operation, and Maintenance of Manuals and Documents

Currently, many companies are facing the important issue of managing and organizing large amounts of documents.
Do you have any of the following concerns regarding manuals?

• Cannot find the desired information or document
• Inconsistent heading structure, layout, and notation/expression make the manual difficult to read.
• I want to effectively reuse common descriptions that exist in multiple manuals.
• Manual revision and updating work takes a lot of time and effort...

Do you have such concerns? At Human Science, we provide DITA implementation support to solve these issues.

DITA services provided by Human Science Co., Ltd.

At Human Science Co., Ltd., we mainly provide rewriting, coding, and translation services.
We also collaborate with partner companies to develop CMS.

Why rewrite before introducing DITA?

In DITA, information is described in topic units and shared among various manuals. In other words, the same topic is reused in multiple manuals, eliminating waste. This is called "topic reuse".
But what if the reused text is difficult to understand and read?
Human Science Co., Ltd. proposes effective writing services to ensure the benefits of DITA implementation are realized.
If there are multiple similar manuals or multilingual translations are planned, it is especially important to review the manuals (preparation) beforehand.

Human Science's Writing Services

1. Rewrite Service Before DITA Conversion

Have you completed the maintenance of your manual when introducing DITA? High-quality writing is essential for topic reuse.
Let's start by reviewing the manual from the following perspectives and brushing up the writing.

2. Topic-Oriented Writing Service for DITA Conversion

"Topic writing" often appears on DITA-related websites. What exactly is the difference between general writing and writing with DITA in mind?
Human Science believes that the following three points are important.

Write with the awareness that everything is a "component".

All paragraphs/sentences that make up the manual are modularized and reused in other manuals.
It is important to write with the awareness that the text being written will also be used in other manuals.
For example, using demonstrative pronouns such as "this" and "that" to refer to the content of the previous paragraph, or sentences that cannot be understood without the context before and after are not acceptable.

All paragraphs should be written with the awareness of being "tagged".

In general writing, the order and placement of paragraphs and sentences can be somewhat ambiguous and still be acceptable.
On the other hand, when tagging, all paragraphs and sentences must clearly convey their meaning and purpose. When coding, it is important to carefully consider the placement and order of tags in order to avoid confusion.

Write with the awareness of being a "structured document".

In general writing, there are writing guidelines. However, clarity is often prioritized and exceptions are allowed.
For example, creating new heading levels or increasing indentation are common practices.
For DITA writing, structured rules take precedence over clarity.
If the rules are not followed, the writing must be revised to adhere to the structured rules during coding.
It is important to adhere to structured rules when writing.

3. Confirm the rewrite range in advance with the manual evaluation report.

You can check in advance how far you will go with the rewrite, the habits of the manual and the range of the rewrite.

Improvement points (sample example)
"Variations in notation", "Duplicate expressions", "Redundant expressions", "Grouping of information", "Organizing procedures", "Unnecessary pronouns" etc.

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