If you’ve been asked to document SOX requirements, read this!

Technical communicators are often asked to document policies and procedures that must be put into place to comply with SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) requirements. If you have been asked to work on such a project, this whitepaper provides a good overview of the SOX regulation as well as the best practices that should be followed. It was produced by a firm named tripwire.

Here’s a link to the document:
Sustaining SOX Compliance

The STC is a worthwhile organization. Want to join?

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) is an international organization which services the needs or writers, visual designers and illustrators. I’m currently Second VP of the New York chapter and I’ve grown to appreciate it quite a bit over the past six years. I find out about the latest tools available and I get the opportunity to network with others — I can even vent with my own peers! This can be one of the most redeeming factors of membership, because this field is definitely misunderstood by the related groups with which I work - IT and Business Analysts.

Come to a meeting! Check here to find your local chapter, and sign up!

The Value of an Index

I have spoken with many Technical Writers who tell me they have no time to write an index for their manuals. They make the statement proudly, as though adding an index is almost an embarrassing subject they don’t want to even talk about! I generally don’t respond to these statements because I don’t agree.

In my estimation, an index is one of the most valuable tools you can have in a document, and it’s not very difficult to add one.

The Table of Contents (TOC) and Index work hand in hand. The TOC handles every major topic covered. It delineates the structure of the document so the reader knows generally where to look for key topics.

However, for all those topics you couldn’t include in the Table of Contents because they are topics in the manual that fall ‘outside’ the outline mode, the index is the perfect place for this information. For example, if you put together an application support manual for online processes, the online processes would be listed in the TOC. However, all the specific jobs that fall within those online processes could be easily listed in an Index.

Using the example I spoke about in the previous paragraph, I broke out the application support manual into four main levels for each online support process: Infrastructure, Support, Troubleshooting and Contacts. These were listed in the TOC. But what about other topics that would be lost while reading the document. How about a topic called “Exceptions” or another topic called “Jobs run at 12 AM”? Where is the reader going to find that information? In an Index, of course!

I advertise the index at the very beginning of the document. I do it because I find that most readers don’t do a scan of the entire document when they start reading, so many of them would not know that an index is available unless they are told. Note that this touch may not be important if the document is converted into online help because the Index is generally part of the generic structure. However, in a hard copy manual (PDF), these tips are important.

Here’s my preface for a recent document:

Resources to help you find material
In addition to the Table of Contents, the following resources are available to help you find material:

• Index of Figures used to illustrate application functions, see page xx.
• Index of topics, see page yy.

If you have any comments, don’t hesitate to get back to me.

Virginia Lynch

SEE ALSO: Creating An Index