Topic-based authoring (structured writing)

A topic is a unit of information with a title and content, short enough to be specific to a single subject. A topic should be short enough to be easily readable, but long enough to make sense on its own.

A document may contain one topic or multiple topics, and a document type might support authoring one or many kinds of topics.

Regardless of where they occur, all topics have the same basic structure and capabilities. Books, PDF files, websites, and help sets, for example, can all be constructed from the same set of underlying topic content, although there may be some topics that are unique to a particular deliverable, and the organization of topics may differ to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each delivery mechanism.

Reference information is inherently topic-oriented, since it requires information to be modular and self-contained for the sake of retrievability.