Chapter 3: Tutorial Content and Organization

Overview

Tutorials can be static documents in PDF format as well as full websites, which are much more fluid, but it’s really important that you understand the role of tutorials in the workplace since they “often carry legal liability” and “the manufacturer can be held responsible for all costs incurred by buyers who, in good faith, attempted to follow the directions” (Tebeaux & Dragga, 2018, p. 254). This means that it is YOUR responsibility as a technical communicator to make sure your content is accurate and clear.

Even though both PDF and website tutorials need similar content, there are major organizational differences between the two, so section 9 will discuss the organization and content in a PDF tutorial while section 10 will discuss websites. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, from Adobe, and one major benefit is the accessibility of the technology as screen readers can easily access the content for vision impaired users.

Both forms of tutorials can be written in a word processing software and then converted into the form you want. The benefit of writing this way is that you can use word processing tools such as a grammar and spelling checker to catch issues that could cause audience confusion.  Additionally, navigation is vital in both PDFs and websites although the ways in which you navigate these deliverables is different.