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Language and punctuation
Titles and headings
Titles are used in a number of mark-up structures in DITA. Titles are a mix of content and metadata. The mark-up in titles should be kept as simple as possible, and workarounds to achieve specific formatting outcomes should not be used.
Where topic titles are used
Topic titles are used to form the heading in the output deliverable document, as well as for other constructs such as link text and metadata values.

Introduction
Information types and topics
Topics are the building blocks of modular documents, and organising topics by semantic information types is one of the architectural features of DITA.
DITA map files
Syntax and mark-up
Language and punctuation
- Avoiding writing for output
  Do not include formatting information in your DITA content topics.
- Stem sentences, glue text, and other transitional information
  Transitional information, such as stem sentences, is largely redundant in DITA's minimalist, topic-based, semantic mark-up architecture. The role of transitional information in contextualising the content has been eliminated through the use of smaller chunk sizes, meaningful titles, information typing, structure, and demarcation labels automatically-generated in the output.
- Punctuation in lists
  Ordered and unordered list items should have no terminating punctuation marks, such as commas, semicolons, and full stops, except when all items in a list are complete sentences. This approach maximises re-usability.
- Titles and headings
  Titles are used in a number of mark-up structures in DITA. Titles are a mix of content and metadata. The mark-up in titles should be kept as simple as possible, and workarounds to achieve specific formatting outcomes should not be used.
  - Case in titles
    Sentence case should be used for topic, section, figure, table and other titles.
  - Line breaks in titles
    There is no line break element or equivalent in DITA.
  - Where topic titles are used
    Topic titles are used to form the heading in the output deliverable document, as well as for other constructs such as link text and metadata values.
  - Crafting meaningful topic titles
    Writing accurate, concise and consistent topic titles is an important challenge for DITA authors. Guidelines for crafting title text make this task a little easier.
  - Conditional titles
    A title element in DITA does not have the normal metadata attributes used for conditional publishing. However, it is possible to carefully use conditions on elements nested within a title element.
- Crafting paragraphs
  A paragraph should contain one unit of thought or action, or main point, and should be typically three to eight sentences in length. All of the sentences in a paragraph should relate to its main point.
- Different languages
  The xml:lang attribute stores the human language of the content, and can be applied to any DITA element.
- Quotation marks
  Quotation marks should not be included in DITA content. The marks should be added, if required, during the publishing process.
Graphics and figures
Cross-referencing
Cross-references are a means of binding individual topics into a coherent and navigable document.
Content re-use
Metadata, conditional processing, and indexing
The DITA documentation process
DITA authoring concepts
Moving from style-based authoring to a structured authoring methodology such as DITA requires a radically different approach to writing.

Where topic titles are used

Topic titles are used to form the heading in the output deliverable document, as well as for other constructs such as link text and metadata values.

Topic titles are extremely important in DITA, as they are used as both as a core navigation aid and for information labelling. The topic title can be generated in the output:

as a heading in page layout output
as a topic heading in Help and Web output
as the page (and window) title in Help and Web output
as hyperlink text in links automatically generated from ditamap hierarchies and relationship tables
as text in cross-references
as a Table of Contents entry
as an Index entry
as link text generated by a search engine
in Dublin Core metadata in Help and Web content

Composite screen captures showing where titles are used in typical Help output — Figure 1. DITA title elements are used in many places in a typical Help output