---
title: "Misconceptions about Topic-Based Authoring"
date: 2012-07-31
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2012/07/31/misconceptions-about-topic-based-authoring/
---
# Misconceptions about Topic-Based Authoring
What does topic-based authoring mean? Somewhere in learning how to be a technical writer, I was taught or assumed that topic-based authoring meant kind of the following:

*When you're exploring software documentation, make a list of all the tasks you think users would do with the application. Let each of these tasks be its own standalone topic in the help. Include a brief description of the task and a series of steps on how to perform it. You can write in any order.*

*When you've finished writing all the tasks, arrange them in a logical way in the table of contents for the reader. Group like tasks together in the same books.*

*You can single source the content from online help to print, as long as you can fine-tune the styling. The reader most likely won't read the manual or online help cover to cover, but will read the topics that matter. *

This was pretty much my idea of topic-based authoring. Everything is an individual, standalone topic that you can mix and match in whatever order you want, almost like a deck of cards.

![Help as non-linear, independent topics](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/topic-based-authoring.png)

Recently I have started to rethink this approach. Reading one of my single-sourced printed manuals (which I wrote using this approach) from cover to cover, I found it a disappointing read. As I turned page after page, the content was redundant in places, conceptually hard to follow, choppy, and at times seemingly random in its organization

My experience made me wonder if perhaps my “topic-based authoring approach” (if indeed that's what it is) led me astray. Maybe the whole paradigm is short-sighted as a technique for writing?

## Topic-Based Approaches for Other Writing Scenarios

It's not surprising to me that a topic-based approach has shortcomings as a technique for writing. Can you imagine any writing scenario where you write a bunch of pieces of discrete information and then mix them in the right order, or into multiple orders, and actually get a readable output? I certainly didn't write this blog post that way.