Narrative-based writing for coherent technical documents
Narrative-based writing for coherent technical documents
Narrative-based writing is a technique that was developed to address the lack of support for document coherence. The technique depends on the production of a story-like executive summary of the document called a DN (Document Narrative). This is then analysed using a discourse theory called Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) which helps further to correct any lapses in coherence in the DN before proceeding to use it to write the document. Previous papers have described the technique briefly, alongside discussions of the ongoing software development to incorporate narrative support in writing tools. It has now become apparent that the technique itself needs to be explained in greater detail. This is the purpose of this paper. Here, narrative-based writing and the reasoning behind it is described. This is followed by a description of a user experiment conducted in May 2006 to evaluate narrative-based writing and discover areas in which it could be improved. The positive feedback from the volunteers has motivated us to continue to refine and simplify the technique.
De Silva, Nishadi
d83d7442-c366-4c5b-9920-baa7a076478f
Henderson, Peter
bf0a7293-7277-459d-9c3c-67b0a6eabd54
October 2007
De Silva, Nishadi
d83d7442-c366-4c5b-9920-baa7a076478f
Henderson, Peter
bf0a7293-7277-459d-9c3c-67b0a6eabd54
De Silva, Nishadi and Henderson, Peter
(2007)
Narrative-based writing for coherent technical documents.
ACM Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC), El Paso, Texas, United States.
22 - 24 Oct 2007.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Other)
Abstract
Narrative-based writing is a technique that was developed to address the lack of support for document coherence. The technique depends on the production of a story-like executive summary of the document called a DN (Document Narrative). This is then analysed using a discourse theory called Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) which helps further to correct any lapses in coherence in the DN before proceeding to use it to write the document. Previous papers have described the technique briefly, alongside discussions of the ongoing software development to incorporate narrative support in writing tools. It has now become apparent that the technique itself needs to be explained in greater detail. This is the purpose of this paper. Here, narrative-based writing and the reasoning behind it is described. This is followed by a description of a user experiment conducted in May 2006 to evaluate narrative-based writing and discover areas in which it could be improved. The positive feedback from the volunteers has motivated us to continue to refine and simplify the technique.
Text
sigdoc46-desilva.pdf
- Other
More information
Published date: October 2007
Additional Information:
Event Dates: 22-24 Oct 2007
Venue - Dates:
ACM Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC), El Paso, Texas, United States, 2007-10-22 - 2007-10-24
Organisations:
Electronics & Computer Science
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 264969
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/264969
PURE UUID: 72d6b27e-166b-42a1-9d33-fe202c96c53c
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 14 Dec 2007 14:58
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 07:59
Export record
Contributors
Author:
Nishadi De Silva
Author:
Peter Henderson
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics