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I have been asked to prepare an internal technical writing guide
for SMEs (subject matter experts) in our company that will
help them provide raw material for us, the technical writers.
It should include:
1. How to budget time and resources for documentation of the
projects in which they are involved.
2. How to determine what each documentation element (chapter, section)
should contain in different documents (data sheets, reference
manuals, user guides).
3. How to avoid the kind of problems that arise when documentation
is produced by a number of different individuals (e.g., inconsistency
in the way names are spelled, duplication of certain explanations).
4. A checklist so that each writer of the raw material can polish the
raw material before submitting it (e.g., check for overly long and
complex sentences, topic sentences for each paragraph, unexplained
new acronyms)
Can anyone suggest any materials that will help me prepare such a
guide.
