Kong's documentation community is growing. That means there are more and more people writing, commenting, editing, and otherwise contributing to Kong's official documentation. But with more contributors comes more variation in writing style, so in order to maintain a consistent voice and style throughout all of Kong's documentation, we have curated a set of technical writing guidelines.
To decrease the turn-around time for publishing docs, we ask that all contributors read through this guide in its entirety, reference our Style Guide, and consider using one of Kong's documentation templates.
When writing documentation for Kong ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is it friendly?
Here at Kong we maintain an approachable yet professional tone. This means docs should:
- be written for all experience levels
- be written in first person plural, e.g., "we"
- avoid placing "blame" on the user
- avoid excessive jokes or informal jargon
2. Is it helpful?
Will this document or update help users to understand a new concept, set up something from scratch, or answer a question?
Writers and editors for Kong docs should strive to cover their topic thoroughly and succinctly. The goal is to help users accomplish a task from start to finish or learn something rather than just copy and paste bits of code. Documentation should also help guide users to other relevant pages or resources.
Avoid terms such as "simple", "easy", and "trivial" so as not to alienate readers who are less familiar with the tools at hand, or who need to jump through administrative hoops to implement a "simple" technical solution. Instead, provide specific reasons for how something is simple, e.g., the steps involved, comparison to another process, or the amount of time saved. Leave it to the reader to determine whether it is simple for them.
3. Is it true?
Kong documentation should be technically accurate and contain enough detail to provide users with the correct context. Before publishing, writers should have other contributors review and verify the technical accuracy of a document. This process ensures that users will be able to follow a doc from start to finish.
Kong docs contain four types of documentation
This type of documentation is strictly informative, such as the descriptions of API endpoints or configuration properties.
Explanatory guides provide in-depth clarification and examples, generally split up into multiple sections.
Explanatory documentation should include:
- Title
- Section 1
- Elaboration
- Example
- Section ...
- Elaboration
- Example
- Section N
- Elaboration
- Example
- Related article
Avoid overly specific edge cases as generally these are more appropriate for How-To guides or Tutorials. Each section should begin with a topic sentence followed by one or more paragraphs that elaborate on the topic and provide examples. The purpose of explanatory documentation is to help a user understand a specific concept.
How-to guides should solve an explicit problem or accomplish a specific task.
They should follow the following structure:
- Title
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Prerequisites
- Step 1
- Step 2
- Step ...
- Step n
- Optional next steps or related article
Our How-to template has this layout available in Markdown for you to use as a starting point.
Title [h1]
How-to guide titles typically follow the “[imperative verb] + [object] + [details]” format, e.g., "Delete an Admin," "Install Kong on Amazon Linux"
Table of Contents [h4]
- Bulleted list of each step in the guide
Introduction [h3]
How-to guides should start with an introduction. It should be limited to a few succinct sentences or paragraphs that introduces what the user will be learning to do. A How-to guide should provide an end-goal, or something that the user will accomplish by following the steps.
Prerequisites [h3]
- A bulleted list of everything a user needs to complete the How-to guide
- May be broken up into subsections for clarity
Steps [h2]
Begin each step with an h2 heading containing a summary statement, followed by a brief introduction of what the step will accomplish. Please be thorough in explaining not only what to a user needs to do in each step but also why. We want users to walk away with an understanding of what they accomplished, rather than just copying and pasting code.
Next Steps [h3] [optional]
After completing the how to guide, consider including a related article or “next steps”. Most guides will relate directly to a property reference, an explanatory doc, or be a prerequisite to another guide, including this information will help guide users through our documentation.
Kong tutorials should be goal-oriented and walk a user through an entire process, from start to finish. They should contain explicit instructions and examples, with complete code snippets and screenshots. A tutorial will state something along the lines of, “In this tutorial, we will learn to do X”.