Structured content:
What it is, why it works,
and how to create it
What is structured content?
Structured content is a way of organising technical information using predefined, meaningful building blocks. Structured writing is the method that enables this approach. Add metadata and ontologies to the picture, and you have an information model based on structured content that encodes not only meaning, but also relations and context.
Technical documentation for chefs: recipes
Recipes and technical documentation follow the same structured logic.
Recipe
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Name of the dish
(metadata: vegetarian) -
Image of the result
-
Ingredients list
-
Required kitchen tools
-
Preparation steps
(metadata: simple)
Technical documentation
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Title of the task
(metadata: preventive maintenance) -
Intended result
-
Parts list
-
Requirements and safety
(metadata: certification required) -
Step-by-step plan and check
We're not the first to compare technical documentation to cooking, but funnily enough:
"Everyone in tech loves using recipes to explain structured content —
except the people actually drowning in recipe content at scale"
Sandie Markle, The Recipe Paradox: Why Food Is Still Missing
From The Structured Content Conversation
Advantages of structured content...
For readers, authors, and content managers
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Authors write efficiently because they are guided through the content creation process.
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Readers find relevant information faster, understand it better.
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Content and knowledge managers find it easier to maintain content and publish it.
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Translators can work more cost-effectively and consistently.
That makes structured writing an essential part of our vision on technical information and one of our most popular workshops.
For AI
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Fewer hallucinations because of the accuracy of the input.
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Better retrieval because easier to find and anchor information.
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Clearer semantic connections and reasoning because of relations.
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Consistent reuse in different AI contexts.
That’s why structured content is the heart of our
AI-ready SharePoint approach in the Healthy Docs, Happy AI workshop.
How to write structured content?
Here are some of the rules and methods we use at Flow:
CHUNKING
Breaking down information into manageable units (based on insights from cognitive psychology).
MODULARITY
Building content from reusable building blocks, a principle found in technology, science, and management.
and Information types:
the semantic layer that also forms the basis of standards such as DITA.
MINIMALISM
Making content as
task-oriented as possible, inspired by the work of information specialist
John M. Carroll.
👉🏻 You can learn all about these principles and how to write structured content in our Structured writing workshop.