- Avoiding writing for output
Do not include formatting information in your DITA content topics.
- Stem sentences, glue text, and other transitional information
Transitional information, such as stem sentences, is largely redundant in DITA's minimalist, topic-based, semantic mark-up architecture. The role of transitional information in contextualising the content has been eliminated through the use of smaller chunk sizes, meaningful titles, information typing, structure, and demarcation labels automatically-generated in the output.
- Punctuation in lists
Ordered and unordered list items should have no terminating punctuation marks, such as commas, semicolons, and full stops, except when all items in a list are complete sentences. This approach maximises re-usability.
- Titles and headings
Titles are used in a number of mark-up structures in DITA. Titles are a mix of content and metadata. The mark-up in titles should be kept as simple as possible, and workarounds to achieve specific formatting outcomes should not be used.
- Crafting paragraphs
A paragraph should contain one unit of thought or action, or main point, and should be typically three to eight sentences in length. All of the sentences in a paragraph should relate to its main point.
- Different languages
The xml:lang attribute stores the human language of the content, and can be applied to any DITA element.
- Quotation marks
Quotation marks should not be included in DITA content. The marks should be added, if required, during the publishing process.