Reuse of content

Single sourcing is the development of content in a form that can be used as the basis for other types of content. For example, the text for a printed document might be reused on your website. The key concept here is reuse.

Here are three situations where you might want to reuse content:

• You sell many products, but their features are very similar.
• You want to deliver content to its audience in a variety of output types - as a web page and as an downloadable PDF document perhaps.
• You have some common text, such as a glossary, that you want to appear in a printed user guide, a quick start document and on the web.

In each of these situations, you could (and should) use single-sourcing techniques to create each deliverable.