DITA Best Practices: A Roadmap for Writing, Editing, and Architecting in DITA

Chapter 4. Reference Topics

When you write task-oriented technical content, you typically start by writing task topics that focus on user goals. Then, you write concept topics to explain ideas that users need to understand to complete the tasks. However, task and concept topics aren’t always enough: You often need to include reference information to further support those tasks.

For example, if you want to describe how to change the oil in your car, you need to write the instructions in a task topic. But users can’t finish that task unless they see a list of parts and tools needed for the job. You describe those parts and tools in a reference topic.

A reference topic is a collection of facts. Those facts might be a list or description of parts, ...