Re: Queries on Single Sourcing

["Mark Baker" <listsub -at- analecta -dot- com>]

Lyndsey Amott wrote

> Ok, I think I get it. :-) But then it seems to me that we have all been
> single-sourcing with boilerplate text, data bases of reusable information
> (glossaries, e.g.), and conditional text long before we used the term
> "single sourcing". In my fifteen years in the business, we've always been
> able to say "for this document, get this file, and put it here."

Absolutely. However, single sourcing is probably the most abused term in the
technical communication lexicon. Everyone agrees that single souring is cool
and therefore everyone wants to claim that they are doing it (and preferably
that no one else is doing it, or at least not doing it right).

I'm going to disagree slightly with Jan's definition. He writes
"Single-sourcing involves continued linking between text parts". Now we are
in Humpty Dumpty land here where words meant what I say they mean, but
single sourcing, based on the ordinary meaning of the words, implies a
single *source* for information. It does not imply a perpetual connection
between the source and every use made of that information.

It is certainly useful in certain situations to maintain a live link between
the source and the place it is used. However, if you maintain a single
source of information and then send that information out into the world from
time to time (as you must if you are to print a book for instance) the you
are still single sourcing in my book.

However, if you copy and paste the information into a new document and then
continue to update and edit that copy of the information, then you are no
longer single sourcing.

Mark Baker
Analecta Communications