ABSTRACT
John M. Carroll’s work on applying principles of minimalism to technical documentation, presented chiefly in his book The Nurnberg Funnel, resonates with professionals advancing theory and practice related to procedural writing, delivery of instruction, and interface design. Carroll explained that with computing systems like notebook computers and smartphones, “there’s no way to economically produce definitive manuals that cheap. Michael Priestley claims that the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) content types of concept, task, and reference are an implementation of Carroll’s idea behind the minimal manual. In the 1990s, Carroll’s work on minimalist documentation also influenced an IBM technical writer to architect the original DITA schemas for structuring content. For technical communicators creating intelligent content, the negative side of schemas is in the “perception that Extensible Markup Language forces writers into creating cookie-cutter topics rather than useful technical information”. A positive side comes from the order and consistency in content that structured authoring methodologies enable.
