Re: Help file TOC Sentence VS Question

[John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

TOCs are one thing, indexes another.

In terms of general information structure, I like to have an overarching 
topic: "About Timecards"

 From there I can introduce other relevant topics - creating, fudging, 
clocking in late - but I always have a good general overview topic to 
which I can link from other topics and from which users can get to 
wherever they want to go.

I even have had situations where one About topic might have several 
other top-level About topics for second-tier information. For example:

    About Mammals
       About Primates
       About Ungulates
       About Rodents

    About Reptiles
       About Snakes

And it fits into an index as Time Cards, About and is usually the first 
topic in the alphabetical list.

My 2¢,

John G



Julie Stickler said the following on 10/28/2009 3:35 PM:
> I was taught that the first level entry in an index should always be a
> noun, not a verb.
>
> Groups
>    creating
>    deleting
>    managing
>
> Because while you say "create" I may be thinking "add" or "insert" or
> "generate."    Your convention is "delete" by my brain is looking for
> the index entry for "remove." etc.  Plus, I find that it's generally
> easier to come up with the "See also" pointers for nouns than for
> verbs.
>   

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
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