Callouts should not be used in graphics

Don’t mark up graphics with callouts.

Background

Doyle (Myths about technical writing) describes this myth and Johnson (14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing) refers to Doyle. Doyle’s description makes it difficult to tell if this is a myth or a simply a tool-specific practice. Doyle describes how some word-processing tools can layer image callouts while DITA does not. The myth, however, does not qualify the practice as being tool-dependant.

Survival tips

• Know how your authoring tool works and your reuse and localization requirements for your image assets.
• Don’t make more work for yourself by having to keep mutliple versions of a single image, if you can avoid it.

Mentions

• 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing
• Myths about technical writing

References

None, so far.