Flashkit Stylesheet for Tutorials Writers - Page 2

Editing/writing tutorials

Tone
The tone of the writing should foster a positive learning environment. The tutorial should be written in the first person and provide a narrative (story) of the step by step process.

Overall Structure
The following is a recommend stucture for the web and for flashkit tutorials. It allows for scannability and for deeper consumption of information.

Para 1. Summary of what you are about to teach, why it's important
Para 2. Example.swf - this is placed high up on the structure so when the page is loaded, it is visible without using the vertical scrollbar.
Para 3. Step one of tutorial
...
Para n. Final step
Para n+1. Closing discussion/links
Para n+2. Quick Reference (if necessary) see further on for details.

Paragraph Structure

The web is different to any other medium as a result people read it differently too. The flashkit tutorials use scannable text which means paragraphs should contain the following elements:

• Highlighted keywords
• Meaningful subheadings
• Bulleted lists
• One idea per paragraph
• low word limit

Actionscript
Many tute writers forget to add the all important element to their tutes - Actionscript. Even thought the source code is provided, people like to have the Actionscript in the tute to help them understand what is going on. When adding code to a tute use the

Language
This is an issue because flashkit is a global site and a significant proportion of its visitors do not use english as their first language. Some who can't use english simply download the source code. Thus it is important to keep the language of a tutorial to year 7 standard. This sounds low however we want to include as many people as possible.