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Subject:Re: A method to organize information. From:"Dick Margulis " <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 6 Nov 2001 14:10:31 -0500
Paula,
It sounds as if you are more "technical" than "writer" and are looking for some really basic advice. Please forgive me if I am misinterpreting your situation.
You don't say what sort of technical document you have in mind, so this is going to be a bit general.
One way you might want to think about a document is that it is a tree. The top node is the whole document. At the next level are the major sections. For example, you might want an introduction ("Tell them what you are going to say."), a body ("Say it."), and a conclusion ("Tell them what you said.").
Then you can do down one more level with the body and break it into whatever is appropriate to the type of document you are writing. For example it might include a history or background section, an analysis section, a hypothesis section, a methods section, etc.
You can continue to subdivide the nodes in this manner until each terminal node is a small chunk of information that you are comfortable writing about in a single paragraph.
Does that address your question?
Dick
Paula Cristina Vaz <paula -dot- vaz -at- altitude -dot- com>wrote:
>
>Can you advise me a method to organize information on a technical document?
>For example, if you want to build a database, you talk to your users and
>make an ER diagram. Then, you build a database from the ER diagram. Is there
>a similar method to "compose" documents?
>
>Is there a way to find out if the document you just write is a good
>document?
>
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