The Impact of Automation on Technical Writing
Automation is often heard in conversations surrounding the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution signifies a period of transition to new manufacturing processes. One of the significant changes of that time was the movement from manual production to automatic and mechanized production. Mechanization involves the use of machines to replace human activities.
Automation involves an entire process of integrating operations. It also ensures the operation of various equipment. Automation describes creating and applying technologies and software to develop and deliver goods and services, thereby reducing human intervention in such processes.
In technical writing, automation occurs in the documentation process. When creating technical documents, a technical writer must decide how to document and which authoring tool to use.
A structured authoring tool like DITA-XML is used to automate content. Oxygen XML supports the repurposing of content into different outputs or deliverables; this is known as single-sourcing. Single sourcing is an automated process using structured authoring tools. Single-sourcing is the use of DITA- to convert content into different deliverables.
Technical Writing is being impacted by automation through the use of applications like DITA-XML. Using XML, you can write once and produce the content in different formats. Imagine using a single piece of content to create a How-To Guide, a user guide, a knowledge base, a social media post, and others, without compromising on quality. This practice has impacted technical writing by:
- decreasing the cost of producing different documentation outputs
- increasing the efficiency of the documentation process
- ensuring consistency and quality of documentation
Automation does not mean that robots are taking over our jobs as technical writers, although most apocalypse movies would disagree. Automation makes the writing process easier, reduces routine, and makes the workflow smoother.
Talk to our DITA experts to know more about how structured authoring can help you make your technical documents easy to access for end-users, reach out to info@metapercept.com.
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