(no subject)

[Kathy10th -at- aol -dot- com]

Hello everyone,

I work in a small documentation department. We have three writers and a 
manager. After much begging and pleading (on my part) we are finally creating 
our style guide. Something stumped us today and I thought I throw the 
question out to you. 

In a printed document, or in a linear online document, I would write the full 
name of "whatever" and put its acronym in parenthesis after it. Thereafter in 
the document, I would use only the acronym. For example, I use CSC quite 
often in my writing. So I would write Customer Service Coordinator (CSC) on 
the first usage and then simply CSC after that.

Our documents are published on our company's intranet. They are not printed 
and are non-linear. We might have a core document of about 200 pages. The 
core document may contain enough information for some users. There are links 
from the core document to other documents that contain additional detail. 
These ancillary documents could add an additional 500 pages. Since the users 
can go from the table of contents directly to the section they want in the 
core document and from there to one or more ancillary files - where is the 
first usage? Do I have to write Customer Service Coordinator (CSC) every time 
I use it? Or, maybe only the first time I use it on a page?

I know a lot of you create online help and so you may have had to deal with 
this type of situation. How did you handle it? I appreciate any advice you 
care to give. Thanks.

Kathy Kurth
Senior Technical Writer
Graebel Companies, Inc.