Managing The King: What Content Strategists Need To Know About Terminology Management

July 21, 2011 Blog 3 Comments

I recently authored a white paper entitled “Managing the King: Why Terminology Management is a Critical Component of Successful Content Strategies”. A summary of the paper is included here to tempt you to download the full version located here (registration required).

Managing the King

Content is king, it is commonly said. Writers, editors, proofreaders and other content professionals have promoted this line of thinking, usually when technology creeps into their turf, promising to help them better create, structure, manage, and deliver content to those who need it — sometimes, without their help.

“Don’t forget about the content,” they remind us. And, as it turns out, they’re right. Content is the lifeblood of an organization. More often than not, content is an organization’s most valuable asset.

And yet, despite the critical importance of content, at the terminology level, it is seldom managed efficiently or effectively. Surprisingly, terminology isn’t addressed in meaningful ways during most content strategy projects, although it certainly should be.
This white paper examines the importance of adopting terminology management as part of an effective content strategy. It serves to highlight the need for managing writers and corporate terminology at a strategic level to ensure that relevant, quality content is provided to those who need it.

Words, Words And More Words

The words we choose to use can have a tremendous impact on others. We know this instinctively. The right words can inform, instruct, and inspire. The wrong ones can confuse, confound, and contradict. And yet, most organizations leave their terminology development to the creativity of writers and editors, most of whom are ill-equipped to select the best words for the job.  It’s not that writers aren’t skilled in the creation of valuable content. Most writers were trained by well-intentioned language arts and creative writing teachers. While they were taught the rules of language — sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, and grammar, as well as the importance of creative writing and rhetoric — most writers were not taught to create content for the international marketplace in which we live today.

Armed with style guides, desktop dictionaries and thesauri, modern wordsmiths attempt to craft quality content following outdated rules created decades ago by teachers who could not foresee the need for a completely different set of writing skills. Today, writers are tasked with creating content that complies with a lengthy checklist of rules they must first study, learn, and use. When they make a mistake, the errors they introduce are expected to be caught downstream by human editors.   Human editors are often overburdened and are just as likely to make mistakes as are writers. Most editors rely on outdated mechanical (manual) editing processes to catch an increasing array of content problems, many of which may introduce unnecessary legal, regulatory and financial risks.  Managing terminological challenges is of critical importance to organizations who realize that content is king. In these organizations, effectively and efficiently managing content means admitting that content — and those who create, maintain and publish it — must be controlled.