internal documentation for research paper

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How to Use Internal Citations

Last Updated: January 30, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD . Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015. There are 14 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 150,969 times.

Citing your research is an important part of any paper, and you should know how to properly use internal citations (also known as parenthetical citations) in your work. If you use direct quotes, paraphrase another’s work, or summarize another’s views, you must document this in your paper through the use of internal citations. The Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association (APA) citation styles are two of the most common; others common styles will follow the same general rules, but you should refer to their specific style guides for more detailed guidance.

Using MLA Style Internal Citations

• Example of a citation with name in the text: “Smith stated that the findings in his experiment were surprising (Smith 30).”
• Example of a citation without name in the text: “The findings in this experiment can be described as surprising (30).”

• If the source is a short work—like a journal article, book chapter, or poem—put the title in quotations when citing.
• If the source is a long work—like a book, play, or even a television show—italicize the title.

• In-text citation: “Smith and Jones conducted the experiment with the help of their colleagues (30; vol. 2).”
• Parenthetical citation: “The results of the experiment were inconclusive (Smith 30; vol. 2).”

• In-text citation: “Some scientists believe the results of the experiment were inconclusive (A. Smith 13), while others found them to be quite grounded in research (B. Smith 30).”
• Parenthetical citation: “Scientists conducting this experiment had differing views on the evidence, some believing the results to be inconclusive and others finding them grounded and quite conclusive (Alex Smith 13; Adam Smith 30).”

• In-text citation: “Smith, Jones, and White suggest that the results to the experiment were inconclusive (30).”
• Parenthetical citation: “The authors state, ‘Significant evidence suggests that the results to the experiment were inconclusive (Smith, Jones, and White 30).’ ”

• In-text citation using et al.: “Jones et al. counter Johnson and White's argument (30).”
• In-text citation using all last names: “Jones, Smith, White, and Johnson counter Jackson, McMahon, and Kent’s argument (30).”
• Parenthetical citation using et al.: Legal experts counter Smith, Jones, and White's argument by noting that the current evidence suggests otherwise (Marks et al. 4).
• Parenthetical citation using all last names: Legal experts counter Smith, Jones, and White's argument by noting that the current evidence suggests otherwise (Marks et al. 4).

• When citing articles and other shorter works, use quotation marks.
• When citing books and other longer works, italicize the title.

• Example of citation: “…as Smith wrote in Experimental Thesis (1: 30-31).”

• When stating the version of the Bible, italicize or underline the title.
• When stating the specific book from the Bible you are referencing, do not italicize or underline its title.
• Example of citation: Ezekiel saw “what seemed to be four living creatures,” each with faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle (King James Holy Bible, Ezek. 1.5-10).

Using APA Style Internal Citations

• Name both authors every time you cite this source.
• An example in-text citation would look like this: “Information gathered by Smith and Jones (2006) indicated that….”
• Parenthetical citation would look like this: “ … (Smith & Jones, 2006).”

• In-text citation for the initial reference: “…Smith, Jones, White, Johnson, and McMahon (2006).”
• Parenthetical citation for the initial reference: “(Smith, Jones, White, Johnson, & McMahon, 2006).”
• Subsequent referencing for in-text citation: “Information gathered by Smith, et al. (2006).”
• Subsequent referencing for parenthetical citation: “(Smith et al., 1993)”

• In-text citation: “Smith et al. (2006) stated…”
• Parenthetical citation: “(Smith et al., 2006)”

• Cite sources with unknown author. As with MLA style, use the article’s title (or a shortened version of the title) in place of an author’s name: “The experiment yielded multiple results (“Learning Theory,” 2006).”
• Titles of web pages, articles, and chapters are cited using quotation marks.
• Titles of reports and books are italicized.

• First citation: (Public Action to Deliver Shelter [P.A.D.S.], 2006)
• Second citation: (P.A.D.S., 2006)

• “Discovered by Smith (2006a) during his experimental testing….”

• In-text citation: Smith stated that he conducted the experiment with the help of colleagues (personal communication, December 2, 2005).
• Parenthetical citation: “(Smith, personal communication, December 2, 2005).”

• If you come across an electronic source with no author or date provided, use the entire title or the first word or two of the title, plus “n.d.” to denote “no date”.
• For electronic sources without page numbers, try to incorporate as much information as possible that would help the reader find the text being referenced.

Community Q&A

• Familiarize yourself with specific citation system that is required by your discipline. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• See handbooks and publication manuals (such as the Penguin Handbook) for examples. This is especially important digital resources are increasingly common, and traditional internal citation rules may no longer be appropriate for these types of sources. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• The format for internal citations is determined by how you refer to the author in the text of your paper, if there are multiple authors, etc. Be aware of how your particular citation system handles different situations with regard to the use of authors. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Things You'll Need

• Style book or guide sheet for each type of citation system.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/mlacitation/intext
• ↑ https://libguides.nwmissouri.edu/mla/intext
• ↑ https://hbl.gcc.libguides.com/c.php?g=339562&p=2286664
• ↑ https://research.wou.edu/mla/mla-indirectquote
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_author_authors.html
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
• ↑ https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/citing-authors-same-surname
• ↑ https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/personal-communications
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/APA7th/intextcitations
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_electronic_sources.html

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How do you cite an internal report?

In the field of numerical modeling, Researchers often times find conference papers or journal articles which cites an internal report as the core of the paper. The main authors may have access to the internal report but what about the others? How does one cite an internal report in doing further research based on the main article?

As an example, This paper and this paper cite both of the papers below -

M. Saeedvafa and R. J. Asaro, “Transformation Induced Plasticity,” (LAUR-95-482, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1995)

Saeedvafa, M, “A Constitutive Model for Shape Memory Alloys”, Internal MSC Report, (January 2002).

• publications
• research-process

• 1 Do you have a non-paywalled example? –  JeffE Commented Aug 12, 2012 at 20:27
• 1 Look at the 2nd paper. –  ShadowWarrior Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 9:47

2 Answers 2

When you cite any source, you should give enough that the reader can, at least in principle, read that source for themselves. This information is especially important when you cite something as a source for further information , as it is in your example paper.

This paper presents the framework of such a complete phenomenological model outlined by Sayeedvafa (2002) that provides a description of a wide range of the observed behavior, which are both tractable from analytical as well as computational viewpoint.

For example, citations of technical reports (like your first example) should uniquely identify both the institution and the report, so that the reader knows who and how to ask for a copy. In particular, if the report is available on the web at a stable location, the citation should include a stable URL.

If a source is likely to be inaccessible to most readers (like your second example), you should also cite an accessible secondary source that describes the relevant content in detail. (If you really want to be helpful, the primary source citation should include a pointer like "Cited in [xxx].") Otherwise, you're just asking for the reader's blind trust that the source has the missing details you claim, or proves the result that you claim, or is as important as you claim, or even exists at all.

Citing a paper serves two roles. One is as a reference - a place for the reader to go and check the details. @JeffE's excellent answer deals with this case. For the completeness of the answer, let me discuss the other case.

The other role of citation is acknowledgment , that is, acknowledging that somebody else did that piece of work, rather than the authors. That should be the only reason for you to cite a paper which is not publicly available (for instance, because it is not yet ready, etc.) Some time you can find a citation that says "Author A., Private Communication", which usally means you had a bunch of emails from Mr. Author, and the result/claim/lemma is actually based on what he told you or the draft of his paper that he sent only to you, etc., and you fully acknowledge him for that contribution.

Personally, I never liked citation to Private communication, but they do exists.

• "Citing a paper serves two roles." Citing serves a whole bunch of other purposes, too, but that is for another question. –  Snijderfrey Commented Dec 10, 2019 at 9:53

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Answered By: Gopal Dutta Last Updated: Dec 20, 2022     Views: 42138

One of the purposes of referencing is to enable others to find the information that you have used in your work. As it would not be possible for others to locate this type of source, you should first check with your tutor if they are happy for it to be used in your assignment. If they agree to this, you should use the following formats for citing and referencing. The reference elements will depend on the type of internal document you want to reference

Citation elements

The name of the company/organisation and the year.

Example citation

(Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018) OR, if using a ‘direct quote’, (Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018:3)

Reference elements

Name of company/organisation. (Year) Title of document . Document number (if provided). Unpublished internal company document.

Example reference

Manchester Metropolitan University. (2018) Flexible working policy . Unpublished internal company document.

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Chapter 22 Appendix B: A Guide to Research and Documentation

Research documentation guidelines.

This appendix provides general guidelines for documenting researched information. See Chapter 7 "Researching" for more on the research process.

22.1 Choosing a Documentation Format

As a rule, your assignments requiring research will specify a documentation format. If you are free to use the style of your choice, you can choose any format you want as long as you are consistent, but you should know that certain disciplines tend to use specific documentation styles:

• business and social sciences: American Psychological Association (APA)
• natural and applied sciences: Council of Science Editors (CSE)
• humanities: Modern Language Association (MLA) or the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS)

For the purposes of this appendix, we will confine ourselves to the three documentation formats that will be the most common in your undergraduate courses: the style manuals from APA and MLA, as well as CMS. (Other formats are listed at the end of this appendix. Also, note this appendix explains the “Notes-Bibliography” system of CMS, used more often in history, the arts, and humanities, rather than the “Author-Date” system, used in the sciences and social sciences.)

These three systems of documentation have been refined over many generations so that academics can rely on certain standards of attribution when they cite each other’s work and when their work is cited. When you enter into an academic conversation in a given discipline, it’s imperative that you play by its rules. It’s true that popular, nonacademic forms of attribution exist. Making a link to another website in a blog or a Twitter post works quite well, but in an academic context, such a form of attribution is not sufficient. Of course it should go without saying that stealing someone else’s words or borrowing them without attribution, whether you do it casually on the web or in an academic context, is simply wrong.

22.2 Integrating Sources

Your goal within a research paper is to integrate other sources smoothly into your paper to support the points you are making. As long as you give proper credit, you can ethically reference anyone else’s work. You should not, however, create a paper that is made up of one reference after another without any of your input. You should also avoid using half-page or whole-page quotations. Make sure to write enough of your material so that your sources are integrated into your work rather than making up the bulk of your paper.

Think of yourself as a kind of museum docent or tour guide when you are integrating sources into your work. You’ll usually want to take some time to set up your use of a source by placing it in a proper context. That’s why in most cases, before you even launch into quotation, paraphrase, or summary, you will have probably already used what’s called a “signal phrase” that identifies the author of the source, and often the specific publication (whether web or print) from which it is taken. After your use of the source, you’ll need to follow up with analysis and commentary on how you think it fits into the larger context of your argument.

22.3 Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

When you quote another writer’s exact words, you will have to identify the page number within the source where you found the quotation or the paragraph number if the source is taken from an online format or database that does not indicate the original print pagination. Note that only APA allows the use of “p.” or “pp.”

Table 22.1 Citing Quotations

Paraphrased and summarized text is cited within text in the same way that quoted material is cited except that quotations are not used. In APA style, you do not need to include page numbers in this case, but MLA and CMS, on the other hand, do still require page numbers, when they are available.

Table 22.2 Citing Paraphrased or Summarized Text

22.4 Formatting In-Text References

When you use others’ ideas, you have a variety of options for integrating these sources into your text. The main requirement is that you make it clear within your in-text reference that the information is not yours and that you clearly indicate where you got the idea. The following box shows some alternate phrases for signaling that the ideas you are using belong to another writer. Using a variety of wording makes writing more interesting. Note: Past tense is used in these examples. You may elect to use present tense (“writes”) or past perfect tense (“has written”), but keep your tense use consistent.

Phrases That Signal an Idea Belongs to Another Writer (Shown in APA style)

• According to Starr (2010)…
• Acknowledging that…
• Starr (2010) stated…
• As Starr (2010) noted…
• In 2010, Starr reported…
• In the words of Starr (2010)…
• It is obvious, according to Starr (2010), that…
• Starr (2010) argued that…
• Starr (2010) disagreed when she said…
• Starr (2010) emphasized the importance of…
• Starr (2010) suggested…
• Starr observed in 2010 that…
• Technology specialist, Linda Starr, claimed that…(2010).
• …indicated Starr (2010).
• …wrote Starr (2010)

Table 22.3 "Integrating Sources (Summarized or Paraphrased Ideas)" shows some actual examples of integrating sources within the guidelines of the three most common documentation formats. You should weave the cited details in with your ideas.

Table 22.3 Integrating Sources (Summarized or Paraphrased Ideas)

Table 22.4 Two Authors

Table 22.5 Multiple Authors

Table 22.6 Personal Communication

22.5 Developing a List of Sources

This appendix provides a general overview of some of the most common documentation guidelines for different types of sources. For situations not described in this appendix, such as types of sources not described in this chapter or situations where you elect to use footnotes or endnotes in addition to in-text, parenthetical citations, check the complete guidelines for the style you are using:

• APA: http://www.apastyle.org
• MLA: http://www.mla.org
• CMS: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org

Some general online searches, especially those conducted on your library databases, are also likely to generate guidelines for a variety of documentation styles. Look for an opportunity to click on a “citation” or “documentation” icon, or ask a member of your college library staff for guidance. You can even get help through the word processing program you typically use. Microsoft Word, for instance, has an entire tab on the taskbar devoted to managing and documenting sources in all three of the styles featured here. Also, don’t forget the tip from Chapter 7 "Researching" about the free resources that abound on the web from various online writing labs (OWLs) managed by writing programs at colleges and universities across the country.

Each different documentation style has its own set of guidelines for creating a list of references at the end of the essay (called “works cited” in MLA, “references” in APA, and “bibliography” in CMS). This section includes citations for the sources included in other parts of this appendix. For additional citation styles, consult complete citation guidelines for the style you are using.

Source lists should always be in alphabetical order by the first word of each reference, and you should use hanging indentation (with the first line of each reference flush with the margin and subsequent lines indented one-half inch). Here are some of the most common types of entries you will be using for your references at the end of your research essays. These lists are by no means exhaustive, but you will note from the examples some of the most important differences in conventions of punctuation, font, and the exact content of each style.

Table 22.7 APA References

Table 22.8 MLA Works Cited

Table 22.9 CMS Bibliography

22.6 Using Other Formats

Although APA, MLA, and Chicago are the most widely used documentation styles, many other styles are used in specific situations. Some of these other styles are listed in Table 22.10 "Other Documentation Formats" . You can find more about them by searching online.

Table 22.10 Other Documentation Formats

How to write Internal Documentation - A guide

Table of contents, what is a project outline.

This guide is to help you introduce internal documentation processes to your business. Whether you’re looking to start internal documentation for the first time or have a ton of knowledge but docs scattered all over the place, this guide can help you ace the internal documentation project .

In this short article, we’ll help you build a business case to get the internal documentation project approved and walk you through how to structure the project with your own company.‍

What is Internal Documentation, and why is it so important?

Internal documentation is essentially a process of getting all of your company knowledge in one place. Creating internal documentation involves investing time and effort into establishing a knowledge base as a reference point for all company processes and procedures, which can significantly improve collaboration and organization.

To build this knowledge base, you no longer need tools that document from source code or software engineering skills. It’s something that anyone in your team can take on. And should take on.

It’s worth noting that this is different from external documentation. External documentation builds a knowledge base for contractors or other external stakeholders; it’s more sensitive with information and is more customer-facing with its language. Your internal documentation is written and designed for your staff workforce, strictly for internal use. It’s essential to thread your brand mission and tone throughout your internal docs to ensure a sense of unity, even in an operational tool. Additionally, having up-to-date documentation is crucial to ensure alignment with company policies and procedures.

Different internal documentation types

There are different types of internal documentation that you need to be aware of before getting started, such as process documentation, team documentation, and project documentation. Firstly, you need to ask yourself which bracket this knowledge base falls under— before you begin your technical writing.

Having relevant documentation available is crucial as it can significantly improve productivity and team morale.

Team documentation

This type will revolve around important topics like team goals, style guides, talent, schedules, meetings, and timelines. Documenting and sharing internal knowledge within a central knowledge base is crucial for preserving company knowledge, enhancing communication between teams, improving productivity, efficiently onboarding new employees, and making information easily accessible. It’s specific to certain areas of the company, and not everyone needs access to every team’s knowledge base.‍

Onboarding documentation‍

All the internal documents need to be threaded into every employee onboarding when getting started and should be a constant reference point for current employees. Onboarding and user documentation should include HR processes and company-wide policies for new team members. It’s also a good idea to give an overview of company structure and people.

Project documentation

‍ This will probably be the most used knowledge-base in your business and one that needs to be continuously updated. This technical documentation area consists of projects, past, present, and future— it will be a reference point throughout any project and historical documentation.

How to manage internal documentation

Managing internal documentation is crucial for any organization. It ensures that all team members have access to the latest information and can contribute effectively to projects. Proper documentation helps in maintaining consistency, improving communication, and reducing errors.

Managing internal documentation is a collaborative effort and not a task for a single person.

1. Measure current internal documentation

First thing’s first, what do you currently have? Do you already have some sort of internal documentation in place, or are you starting from scratch?

If starting from scratch

If this is the case, then you need to identify whose head knowledge is currently sitting. This knowledge may not always be with the dinosaurs of the company. Perhaps fresh heads have come in, been placed with a process, and optimized for greater efficiency.

Who is in charge of significant processes or pieces of knowledge? Identify those employees rather than people that have simply been in your organization longest.‍

If you have basic internal documentation already

Don’t underestimate what you already have. If a business doesn’t have regulated, open-source internal documentation software , people tend to create their own to ensure they keep knowledge somewhere. The internal documents created, such as project proposals, business cases, project plans, and meeting minutes, play a crucial role in clarifying project objectives, planning and assigning resources, and aligning project stakeholders.

You could have a collection of google docs attached to personal accounts. You could have Microsoft word documents on email chains or passwords and sensitive info stored in various people’s notes. Perhaps you have random information stored in javadocs.

Whatever you’ve got at the moment, collect it all. This process will help you understand who has an overview of what and get inline with how people think information should be stored.

2. Layout discovery with an index

Something to help people navigate your internal documentation library when it’s finished and structure the information you need, an index. Your index should be logically constructed and can massively help in getting started. It’s often best to launch this part of the project with a diverse focus group from within your company.

Indexing at the starting point in the process will also help guide your keyword search process that you’ll apply in the “how to use this company wiki ” at the end of the process.

‍3. Build architecture and templates

The next step in your company wiki building process is to create the knowledge base architecture and templates. Despite writing documentation no longer needing product development and source code, it should still be treated as a software project with a software engineering frame of mind. Think of how you want employees to engage with the knowledge base, how they will navigate between documents, and consider what makes the most sense to group together.

If someone is looking for a particular piece of information, what other information will they find useful? It’s all part of the UX architecture.

Next up is the UI architecture. How can you create visually appealing templates that are as engaging and joyful to read as they are knowledgeable? You can’t expect teams to power through great chunks of text, or unformatted copy.

Build templates that are conscious of the visual design and aesthetic appeal of your knowledge base. What’s you’ve got these templates lined up, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Example of our Internal Documentation in Slite‍

4. Assign Creators

Internal documentation is a big lift and one that you can’t possibly expect to go at alone. One person in a large business can’t know the ins and outs of every department and process. Appointing content curators for creating and maintaining internal documentation is crucial for ensuring the effectiveness and continuity of your knowledge base.

Assign your knowledge base creators and call a structured meeting to onboard them to the authoring tool and launch the project. By “outsourcing” your knowledge base, you’ll ensure a more in-depth overview of the process and give yourself a holistic overview of the project status. Create internal documentation to facilitate knowledge transfer within the organization and share best practices for document management.

Don’t worry about bringing so many people in at this stage. If you’ve followed the previous steps, everyone should know where their knowledge fits within the knowledge base. Your templates will also ensure that the knowledge you receive back is unified and structured— giving you minimal editing work.

At this point, it may be worth clearing up with your contributors who will have access to their part of the knowledge base. Company wikis do not need to be accessed by everyone and can be harmful if they are. Give your contributors the peace of mind that certain people will only access their area.

5. Review submissions to your company wiki

If you really want to ace your internal documentation, then it’s essential to thread in ample time to review knowledge submissions and for rounds of edits. People write differently; they have different use cases for team-specific words and may not have a writing style that matches the brand’s tone.

Allow for this. Don’t think you need to take on the workload because of this, and it just means you need to edit the knowledge you receive to make sure it’s unified in brand voice and accuracy.

6. Map operational use

While your stakeholders are creating their outlines and filling out your wiki templates , it’s time to compose the company wiki’s runbook. This “how-to” will be at the forefront of your onboarding campaign— it needs to be as clear as possible.

If you're a Slite user, be sure to highlight the power of Ask, Slite's AI-powered search. Explain how it can quickly surface relevant information from across your knowledge base and connected tools, saving your team valuable time and effort.

These user guides should include example use cases, a guide for getting started and future use, and any faqs you think may come up along the way.

7. Get feedback and allow for updates

Once your internal documentation process and company knowledge base are released, try to hold a focus group or allow feedback as part of the development process. Allow people to @tag you and comment on their questions, concerns, or provide useful feedback. This way is especially useful for a distributed team working across different time zones.

However, you can also consider hosting a feedback focus session after a couple of weeks of use. Collect a handful of users from the company and learn how they’re interacting with the tool. When you’re so hands-on in building a knowledge base , it can be hard to understand how other people interact with it. Give them an open opportunity to create your wiki .

8. Assign owners by field and total project

Last but not least, is looking after the lifespan of your own internal documentation. Look at these documents as living sources of information. Structuring and organizing work within your documentation hub is crucial. People will refer to them often and in times of need.

It’s so vital that you keep this knowledge up to date. There’s nothing worse than someone using your knowledge base only to find outdated information and have to email around asking for the info they need.

Tips on Acing Internal Documentation

Creating a killer internal documentation system isn't rocket science, but it does require a bit of strategy and the right tools. Here's how to nail it:

• Start with a Knowledge Audit: Before you start writing, take stock of what you already have. Are there scattered documents, tribal knowledge trapped in people's heads, or maybe even an outdated wiki? Gather it all up, even if it's messy. This gives you a starting point and helps you identify gaps and redundancies.
• Create a Roadmap (and Stick to It): Treat your documentation project like any other important initiative. Develop a clear roadmap with timelines, milestones, and assigned responsibilities. This keeps everyone on track and ensures your project doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Tools like Slite can help you create and share this roadmap, keeping everyone aligned and informed.
• Build a Solid Structure: Think of your documentation like a well-organized library. Create a clear hierarchy of information, using categories, tags, and a table of contents to make it easy for people to find what they need. Slite's intuitive interface and nested page structure make it easy to create a logical and easy-to-navigate knowledge base.
• Write for Your Audience: Remember, your internal documentation is for your employees, not your customers. Use clear, concise language and avoid jargon. Think about the questions your team members are likely to ask and answer them proactively. Slite's collaborative editor makes it easy for multiple people to contribute to documents, ensuring that your content is comprehensive and accurate.

• Make it Visually Appealing: Nobody wants to read a wall of text. Break up your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements. Slite's rich media embed feature makes it easy to add visual elements to your documentation, making it more engaging and easier to digest.
• Keep it Updated: Your documentation is only useful if it's up-to-date. Set a regular schedule for reviewing and updating your content to ensure it reflects the latest processes and procedures. Slite's knowledge management panel can help you track which articles are outdated and need a refresh.

• Encourage Collaboration: Your documentation shouldn't be a one-way street. Encourage your team to contribute their knowledge and expertise. Slite's commenting and @mention features make it easy for team members to ask questions, provide feedback, and collaborate on improving the documentation.
• Measure Your Success: How do you know if your documentation is working? Track metrics like page views, search terms, and user feedback. This will help you identify areas where your documentation can be improved and ensure that it's delivering real value to your team. Slite's analytics dashboard provides valuable insights into how your knowledge base is being used, so you can make data-driven decisions about how to improve it.

Wrapping up acing internal documentation

Internal documentation certainly isn’t easy. It takes time and dedication from not only the project manager but contributors as well. However, that doesn’t mean it’s altogether impossible. Use this guide as your go-to resource when implementing your internal documentation process. Internal documents created, such as project proposals, business cases, project plans, and meeting minutes, play a crucial role in clarifying project objectives, planning and assigning resources, and aligning project stakeholders.

Remember, if you want to keep your employees engaged and trusting the information you provide, then you need to keep your documents up to date. Changes to processes or procedures need to be implemented in your knowledge base before communicated to the team.

Look at good technical documentation as an opportunity to unite your workforce. It will give teams a greater understanding of each other and their work. It also has the power to amplify your business’s mission and vision with language and layout. Build the process slowly and carefully, you’re building a lifelong resource for your business, and it needs strong foundations to last.

Manage Internal Documentation with Slite: Your All-in-One Solution

We get it – building and maintaining internal documentation can feel overwhelming. But it doesn't have to be. Slite is designed to make the entire process a breeze, from capturing knowledge to sharing it seamlessly across your team.

With Slite, you can:

• Create beautiful, organized documentation: Slite's intuitive editor and customizable templates make it easy to create visually appealing and well-structured documentation that your team will actually want to read.
• Collaborate in real-time: Say goodbye to endless email chains and version control headaches. Slite's real-time collaboration features allow your team to work together seamlessly, ensuring everyone is always on the same page.
• Find information instantly: Slite's powerful AI-powered search, Ask, makes it easy to find exactly what you need, even across connected tools like Slack and Google Drive. No more digging through endless documents or asking colleagues for help.
• Keep your documentation up-to-date: Slite's Knowledge Management Panel helps you identify outdated content and track document usage, so you can ensure your knowledge base is always accurate and relevant.
• Empower your team to share knowledge: Slite's intuitive interface and collaborative features make it easy for everyone to contribute their expertise, creating a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement.

Whether you're just starting your internal documentation journey or looking for a more streamlined solution, Slite has everything you need to create a knowledge base that truly empowers your team. Give Slite a try today and see how easy it can be to build a documentation powerhouse.

Ishaan Gupta is a writer at Slite. He doom scrolls for research and geeks out on all things creativity. Send him nice Substack articles to be on his good side.

Elisa Reggiardo is part of the Marketing team at Slite where she leads the Partner Marketing motions. She is also a mom, author, and a big fan of delicious wine.

Working remotely? So are we since 2016. Slite may be the right communication tool for you!

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How to write good documentation: home, documentation.

Why to Write Documentation

Documentation effectively connects humans and machines.

Why writing documentation is important:

• You will be using your code in 6 months
• You want people to use your code and give you credit
• You want to learn self-determination
• Others would be encouraged to contribute to your code
• Others can easily use your code and build upon it
• Advance the science
• Encourage open science 
• Allow reproducibility and transparency

What should you document about your research? Everything! All the data, notes, code, and materials someone else would need to reproduce your work.

Consider the following questions:

• How is your data gathered?
• What variables did you use?
• Did you use any code to clean/analyze your data?

Best Practices for Documenting Your Project

Best Practices for Writing Documentation:

• A brief description of the project
• Installation instructions
• A short example/tutorial
• Allow issue tracker for others
• What a function does
• What are the function's parameters or arguments are
• What a function returns
• Document your code
• Apply coding conventions, such as file organization, comments, naming conventions, programming practices, etc.
• Include information for contributors
• Include citation information
• Include licensing information
• Link to your e-mail address at the end
• List all the versions of the files along with the major edits you did in each version

An important tip: Naming files should be descriptive and consistent!

• Date format (ISO 8601 Standard): YYYYMMDDThhmmss
• Project or experiment name
• Researcher name/initials
• Date or date range of collection version

An example for README file.

An example of code documentation.

Tools for Documentation

Tools for Documentation:

• Doctest  
• R Markdown  
• Doxygen  - Doxygen can be used for C, C#, PHP, Java, Python, and Fortran.
• ​ BoostBook

Software Documentation Hosting Options:

• Read The Docs
• 18 Software Documentation Tools
• BIDS Docathon Kickoff - A Video
• Docathon at BIDS
• Documenting Your Code
• First Steps with Sphinx
• Google Style Guides
• How to maintain an open source project
• A Quick Guide to Software Licensing for the Scientist-Programmer

Library Data Services Program

• Last Updated: Nov 6, 2023 2:10 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/how-to-write-good-documentation

Business growth

Business tips

How to write internal documentation that works

Write with outsiders in mind, and your documentation will do its job..

Remember: when creating documentation, you're not speaking to people with institutional knowledge. You're speaking either to people who sit outside your team and aren't privy to your department's lingo, or to the newbies who don't yet know their CRMs from their CMSs. 

I've seen my share of bad documentation and have created plenty of (I hope!) good documentation. Here, I'll share my tips for creating documentation that stands the test of time—and that people actually use.

1. Don't get bogged down by the details

If your internal docs are so convoluted that you break down every single process and concept within that process in agonizing detail, you and your readers are in for a rough time. (Unless they're speed-reading champion Anne Jones, who can read 4,200 words per minute. In which case, can I get an intro?)

You're also going to have a field day when something inevitably changes and you need to update your docs to match. 

Say, for example, your team moves your entire webinar flow over to a new marketing tool to better track attendees and form submissions in one place. Imagine having to go through 120 pages of documentation to find and eradicate any mention of the way you used to manage webinars.

For overarching processes, it's better to whittle down the writing to a digestible format, with enough detail for it to be comprehensible, but not so in-depth that any tiny change in the process would make the whole lot moot. 

That way, if ever I'm out of office, someone else can easily take over for me; or if there's a change in the process, it'll be super quick to update.  

Of course, there are times when it pays to be specific—like if you're writing instructions on how to use a specific tool for a specific task. But even then, you need to use your discretion on the level of detail. For example, here's the table of contents for how we teach folks at Zapier to use our content management system.

In our team documentation, we break each topic down into sections so it's easily navigable, but each section is so short and to the point that anyone can learn how to use our CMS. Any abstract information about what we publish and why is kept inside our team charter to avoid confusion.

2. Keep your processes straightforward

We humans have a bad habit of overcomplicating things. 

Take project management, for example. Usually, a project manager's internal docs come with a list of project templates for company use. This is how we kick off projects at Zapier.

Pretty handy, right? All you have to do is make a copy of the template and get to work. 

But let's say you're working on a project that involves a number of teams, and you're asked to set up the same templates across four different tools because every team uses a different app. The process itself is too convoluted, so there's no way to document it well.

If the process is complicated, the documentation will be too. If you can't explain something in straightforward terms, you should correct the process until you can. Your processes—and the documents explaining them—should aim for what helps the most people, not what helps a few people the most. 

3. Replace jargon with plain language

Let's be real: your fresh hires don't have a clue what's going on. 

I certainly didn't when I first joined Zapier. What helped me find my feet were loads of internal docs that were intentionally written with newcomers in mind. 

So: assume the reader can easily grasp the concept at hand, but take the time to explain it to them as though they've never heard of it. Like this glossary we use at Zapier.

Newcomers will connect the dots and start making an actual impact on the business faster. 

4. Include broader context about each team

Having a strong company culture isn't something you can just declare. It takes deliberate action to bring people together and to make every department accessible. 

Take a content strategist, for example. If they know what Marketing Ops is up to, and understand how they go about lead scoring and segmenting users, the strategist will be better equipped to shape the narrative of the story they're telling—because they'll have a better idea of the audience they're serving. 

At Zapier, we do this by breaking down our team structure and giving clear instructions on how to work cross-functionally.

Essentially, every company runs more smoothly when different departments can all sing the same tune and collaborate easily. Sharing ideas with people who work outside the department means you can establish meaningful working relationships. This, in turn, leads to greater insights and better business decisions. 

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Elena Alston

Elena Alston is a content specialist at Zapier based in London. She's a big advocate of automation and loves making it more accessible to people via storytelling.

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An Overview of Documentation Systems

Documentation systems are tools by which one participant in an academic discipline, or field of study, acknowledges the work of another. Using one is much more than a professional courtesy: it is a requirement.

This guide covers the reasons for this requirement, the kinds of sources that must be documented, as well as explanations and examples of the different formatting rules governing the five systems most frequently used in the academic and professional world.

Overview: Documentation Systems

Research writing is how an academic community exchanges ideas and shares the results of their work. You may hear this community called a "discourse community". That's because its members belong to a specific discipline, like anthropology, Victorian literature or physics. The ongoing conversation between members of these communities helps further the work of individual contributors.

Publishing is one of the ways in which these communities talk to each other: text-books, articles in professional journals and conference proceedings, for example, are part of the conversation. Collectively, they constitute a library of sources upon which any researcher may draw. To "borrow" from this library, participants in the conversation must document their use of these sources.

Available to meet this requirement are a variety of documentation systems designed to fit the specific needs of different academic disciplines. In the humanities, for instance, the Modern Language Association (MLA) style is preferred, while in the social and natural sciences there is a larger tendency toward the American Psychological Association (APA) style.

There are no hard and fast rules, however. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is often used in both the humanities and the social sciences. In the "hard sciences" preferences run more to the Council of Biology Editors (CBE) style and the Civil Engineering Citation Guide (CEC) . Your instructors will advise you on which to use.

Why Sources are Documented

The most obvious reason for documenting your sources is to avoid plagiarism and its consequences. There are other reasons as well, all related to preserving the integrity of academic inquiry, the process involved and the results produced.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Most students are aware of the general definition of plagiarism: intentionally representing another person's ideas, findings, statistics, language, sentence structure, etc. as their own.

There is more to it, however, than handing in a roommate's composition or pulling a paper off the Internet. In fact, many incidences of plagiarism are unintentional and quite often the result of carelessness or simple ignorance regarding academic rules.

Deliberate or not, plagiarism is academic dishonesty. The consequences are significant: failure or expulsion from an academic institution for students; loss of credibility and severely damaged reputations for professionals.

The importance of understanding and avoiding plagiarism cannot be overstated.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Acknowledging sources is an ironclad rule in the world of academic research. Not only are intellectual property rights at stake, but the simple notion of doing the right thing, as well.

Individuals who have pursued a specific line of inquiry and have made a significant contribution to their field of study deserve recognition; it's their due. More importantly, giving credit eliminates suspicion of having taken credit where credit isn't due.

Keeping "who said what" organized allows for an orderly presentation of ideas. Accurate documentation ensures a tangible background of verifiable sources against which the trustworthiness of someone's findings or conclusions can be measured. It also creates the foundation upon which future inquiry and research can be built.

Building Your Own Credibility

At the core of winning over an audience is the ability to present an argument. Convincing others that your way of thinking is worthy can be very challenging and it will be an uphill battle if you build the foundation of your argument on poorly documented research. At stake is your credibility.

Citing and documenting trustworthy sources in your work will bolster the notion that what you have to say is credible and trustworthy. It will help convince your audience that you know what you talking about, that you are familiar with the historical context of your topic and that your contribution or perspective has value.

It also provides the information needed for others with similar interests to test your findings. Successful duplication of your research serves to strengthen your thesis and validate your conclusions: a desirable result. Improperly documenting your sources will hinder other researchers from achieving this goal.

Creating Context

It's important to draw a clear line between your own ideas and those of others. Citing and documenting your sources draws that line. It also describes the contextual framework, or "context", in which you wish your ideas, arguments and observations to be viewed; the larger conversation in which it should be placed.

When there are multiple sources and varying viewpoints in a discourse community's conversation, the contextual frame assigns intellectual and academic responsibility to the contributing authors. This is particularly important when forming an opposing argument or attempting to disprove the conclusions of someone else.

Proper documentation separates the various points-of-view in the source material and helps the reader see the path you followed in developing arguments that support your conclusions.

What Sources are Documented

Generally, all published or copyrighted information must be documented. This means anything summarized, paraphrased, or quoted. The same goes as well for any unpublished material. If it's not yours you have to say so: You have to give credit where credit is due.

Here are some types of information that should always be documented:

• Facts not widely known or debatable, especially if their veracity can be challenged in any way.
• Hard evidence such as statistics, graphs, charts, diagrams, or figures unless they are products of your own field research.
• Opinions, claims or assertions that illustrate a point that may be perceived as questionable or controversial.
• Unique Phrasing and Terminology that does not fit your writing style, personal voice or level of academic experience.

The types of information that need not be documented include:

• Information largely considered general knowledge.
• Information that can be found in encyclopedias, dictionaries or any of a variety of other sources.
• Information derived from personal experience, observations, or field research.

If you have any difficulty determining whether a piece of information needs to be documented, ask yourself this: Did you possess the information in question before you began your research project or after? You must cite and document information learned about in the course of your work. When in doubt, you should do the same. An ounce of prevention never hurts.

How Sources are Documented

Conventions for documenting source material differ slightly from style to style; however, both in-text citation and end documentation are universal requirements.

They are used in conjunction with each other: First, the in-text citation flags the reader's attention identifying the source material and second, the end documentation catalogues the bibliographic information flagged by the in-text citation.

Note: The Chicago Manual of Style points out an exception: when only a handful of sources are used, footnotes may replace end documentation.

In-Text Citations

There are various types of in-text citation methods. The Chicago Manual of Style uses superscript numbers inserted into the text at the citation point. These numbers direct readers to corresponding footnotes at the bottom of the page or endnotes found at the end of a document. The Council of Biology Editors (CBE) uses superscript numbers also, but they direct reader to corresponding entries found only in a References List at the end.

By far, the most common method is parenthetical. Used by most style sheets, this system relies on parenthetical notes inserted at the point of citation. In the case of the American Psychological Association (APA) , The Chicago Manual , and CSE styles, the parenthetic note contains an author name and publication date. The Modern Language Association (MLA) style places page numbers inside the parenthesis as well, indicating where the cited material can be found.

Each parenthetical note refers to a bibliographic entry in the end documentation, known as a Works Cited or References List . Most writers and readers prefer the efficiency of this system since interruption to the flow of text is minimal and less distracting.

End Documentation

The Works Cited or References List is a bibliographic compilation of the specific sources cited within an academic paper or book and is located at the end of a document on pages that are separate from the rest. Though there are similarities, each documentation system handles formatting a little differently.

Regardless, end documentation accomplishes two things: First, it offers reading suggestions to those interested in your research, especially those who wish to replicate your work. Second, it provides the writer with a tool for assessing his or her research.

Once a Works Cited or References List is compiled it is much easier to consider the following questions:

• How comprehensive is my research? What have I omitted?
• Are there other sources that would lend further credibility to my position?
• Will my audience expect me to have reviewed more source material?

In-text citation and end documentation are two sides of the same coin. They function together. One without the other makes little sense.

Related Information: Example of How Sources are Documented

An in-text citation must be accompanied by a corresponding entry in a Works Cited or References List at the end of your document. One without the other is incomplete and unacceptable.

Imagine reading an article and you come across the following:

The difficulty I describe here is akin to what Michael North, in his discussion of Claude McKay's dialect writing, aptly calls the "linguistic no-man's-land" entered when McKay attempts to stop writing in the Jamaican dialect (67).

Suppose you are unfamiliar with Michael North and want to know more about his work. The Works Cited or References list at the end of the article should help by revealing the following bibliographic entry:

If this entry is missing, or if there is no Works Cited or References List at all, the reader will have a hard time tracking down and learning more about the author and his work. Likewise, if the entry exists but no citations appear in the text, where and how and why the writer used the source will be unclear.

Note: A Works Cited , Literature Cited , or References List is known as a Selected Bibliography and contains only those sources cited within a document. An actual Bibliography is more extensive. It represents all the sources reviewed in the research process and includes those which are not cited in your document.

This distinction is important because students are sometimes asked to include both end documentation and a bibliography when they hand in their work. Before beginning, it's a good idea to find out what your instructor requires and which documentation system he or she expects you to use.

Connor, Peter, Donna LeCourt, & Laurel Nesbitt. (2009). Documentation Systems: An Overview. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=14

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MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

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Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the  MLA Handbook  and in chapter 7 of the  MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's  The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the  internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in  Nature  in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's  The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's  Evaluating Sources of Information  resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

• Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
• Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
• Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like  CNN.com  or  Forbes.com,  as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009. 

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

Documentation in Reports and Research Papers

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

In a report or  research paper , documentation is the evidence  provided for information and ideas borrowed from others. That evidence includes both primary sources  and secondary sources .

There are numerous documentation styles and formats, including MLA style (used for research in the humanities), APA style (psychology, sociology, education), Chicago style (history), and ACS style (chemistry).

Examples and Observations

• Adrienne Escoe "Documentation has many meanings, from the broad—anything written in any medium—to the narrow—policies and procedures manuals or perhaps records." ( T he Practical Guide to People-Friendly Documentation , 2nd. ed. ASQ Quality Press, 2001)
• Kristin R. Woolever "An issue more important than documentation form is knowing when to document. In brief, anything that is copied needs to be documented... "Perhaps the best tip for knowing when to document is to use common sense. If writers are careful to give credit where it is due and to provide the reader with easy access to all the source material, the text is probably documented appropriately." ( About Writing: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers . Wadsworth, 1991)

Note-Taking and Documentation During the Research Process

• Linda Smoak Schwartz "The most important thing to remember when you take notes from your sources is that you must clearly distinguish between quoted, paraphrased , and summarized material that must be documented in your paper and ideas that do not require documentation because they are considered general knowledge about that subject." ( The Wadsworth Guide to MLA Documentation , 2nd ed. Wadsworth, 2011)

Library Resources Versus Internet Resources

• Susan K. Miller-Cochran and Rochelle L. Rodrigo "When you are reviewing and analyzing your resources, keep in mind that the library/Internet distinction is not quite as simple as it might seem at first. The Internet is where students often turn when they are having difficulty getting started. Many instructors warn students against using Internet resources because they are easily alterable and because anyone can construct and publish a Web site. These points are important to remember, but it is essential to use clear evaluative criteria when you are looking at any resource. Print resources can be self-published as well. Analyzing how easily a resource is changed, how often it is changed, who changed it, who reviews it, and who is responsible for the content will help you choose resources that are reliable and credible, wherever you might find them." ( The Wadsworth Guide to Research, Documentation , rev. ed. Wadsworth, 2011)

Parenthetical Documentation

• Joseph F. Trimmer "You may decide to vary the pattern of documentation by presenting the information from a source and placing the author's name and page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. This method is particularly useful if you have already established the identity of your source in a previous sentence and now want to develop the author's idea in some detail without having to clutter your sentences with constant references to his or her name.​" ( A Guide to MLA Documentation , 9th ed. Wadsworth, 2012)
• What Is a Style Guide and Which One Do You Need?
• Bibliography: Definition and Examples
• Definition of Appendix in a Book or Written Work
• Characteristics of a Formal Prose Style
• What Is a Research Paper?
• Primary and Secondary Sources in History
• Thesis: Definition and Examples in Composition
• What Is a Primary Source?
• Justification (Typesetting and Composition)
• How to Use Footnotes in Research Papers
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• Biographies: The Stories of Humanity
• Margin (Composition Format) Definition
• Holistic Grading (Composition)
• Definition and Examples of Evidence in Argument
• How to Use Block Quotations in Writing

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5 Best Practices for Successful Internal Documentation

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Determine what information needs to be documented

Procedures and workflows.

Documenting your business procedures can be a daunting task, but it’s one that will save the company significant time and money in the future. To get things started, identify the core processes in your organization. These will vary by industry, but to give you an idea of the types of questions it’s helpful to ask, let’s say your organization is in retail. What steps are taken to order new inventory? How do employees complete returns? What’s the escalation procedure for an unhappy customer? How do you onboard new employees?

The answers to these questions will help you narrow down the most important core processes that keep your business going. This is where you want to start with your internal documentation. Begin with the most essential of these practices and continue down the list until all major policies and workflows are documented.

Projects and clients

In addition to the core processes of your business, it’s smart to keep documentation on your projects and clients. This is the best way to keep everyone on the team aligned during a long, multi-phase project or to provide valuable insight for future projects. Referencing project documentation can help employees in many ways such as providing inspiration for new projects or choosing the best way to structure a complex project with many milestones.

Keeping documentation on your clients is also a great idea. It makes your company look more professional when employees can simply reference internal documentation to be reminded of client preferences and important information instead of asking the client for these details again. 

Identify the best format and keep it simple

Internal documentation can quickly become overwhelming, so it’s important to consider how you’ll convey the information. Hierarchy of Information is a design principle that is helpful for this stage. Information hierarchy refers to the way elements are arranged on a page or in graphic design that conveys at a glance what information is essential. You can use this design principle in your internal documentation by using headings, bullet points, and other common formatting tools. 

In addition to formatting text elements, you can also use a variety of documentation formats such as videos, screenshots, flowcharts, checklists, or diagrams. The type of workflow and its complexity can help you determine which format is best. For example, internal documentation on how to add a new customer to your CRM might be best conveyed with a quick video tutorial. While you could write these steps out and include screenshots, this would take much longer to create and be less helpful to your employees than a video that shows someone actually using the CRM. 

The end goal of all international documentation is to make it easy for employees to quickly review standard procedures or get up to date on the current state of a project. This helps keep their work organized and boosts their productivity.

Connect with relevant departments or employees

To ensure your internal documentation is up to date and accurate, include the departments or specific employees who carry out these work processes or projects. They have the most intimate knowledge of the subject, so their input is invaluable. 

This is also a great time to ask them if there are any steps that could be improved or eliminated to make the procedures faster or more effective. Employees who regularly do these processes will undoubtedly have helpful insight on how to improve them. Don’t reject these suggestions out of hand simply because they’re not the established method. Listen to the reasoning behind the suggested changes and talk them through to see if they’re viable. A smart tweak to your systems could stimulate meaningful changes to the quality of work or how quickly it’s completed. 

Quality management

Recording the core processes and projects of your organization is time consuming, but when done correctly, it can save your company significant money in employee turnover, recruitment and training, avoidable mistakes, and increased employee productivity. The key to keeping internal documentation valuable is to implement quality management. Have departments regularly review the documentation relevant to their teams to ensure the information is current. If any changes need to be made, designate a specific person to update the record. 

To get the most benefit from your internal documentation, it must be organized, accessible, and up to date. If employees find that the information in these documents is wrong or outdated, they will stop using them. Without a central document to govern procedures, employees will eventually begin to make mistakes. Quality management of your internal documents will keep workflows from being disrupted and affecting the company’s bottom line. 

Online file sharing and storage

Once you have your documentation ready, you’ll need a secure way to store it and make it accessible to your team. Online file sharing & storage such as Onehub allows you to create secure, shared folders that are quickly and easily accessible to employees. Accessibility of this information is vital, as it ensures all the effort that went into accurately documenting your internal workflows, procedures, and projects will pay off. 

For procedures that contain sensitive information such as HR documentation, Onehub provides granular control over roles and permissions. This means you can decide which users are authorized to view sensitive information. In addition to the security that roles and permissions provide, Onehub also protects your data with bank-level encryption. 

Some Onehub clients such as BankTEL have even been able to simplify business processes by creating automated, auditable, one-click actions within the platform that improve efficiency. Our robust selection of collaboration and communication tools also help support your employees’ productivity. 

To test drive Onehub’s online storage and file-sharing tools, sign up today for a free 14-day trial — no credit card required!

Laura Hisler

Break Down Information Silos With Cloud Storage and File Sharing

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Internal Documentation: How to Create, Tips & Examples

Category: Standard Operating Procedures

Last updated on Aug 26, 2024

Every organization has a store of internal knowledge that keeps the wheels turning and the lights on. These knowledge assets are unique to each business and are highly dependent on the individuals you have working for you. The problem is, that this knowledge is all too often stored in the heads of employees. If the knowledge is documented at all, it’s usually hidden in Slack channels or messages, email chains, or other tools. There is no single source of truth for your documentation, and employees must waste valuable time and effort hunting for the information they need.

Is there a better solution? Yes. The answer is to document your knowledge for future reference in a single tool that employees can reference whenever they have a question.

What is Internal Documentation?

Internal documentation may seem like a waste of time until you need it. If you run into an issue and find there is a documentation page that can help, it turns into gold dust.

Internal documentation is the record of all your company’s internal knowledge, ranging from processes and procedures, best practices, IT and software specs, and much more. Internal documentation is intended for reference by employees to get their work done and standardize performance across the organization.

It exists in contrast to your external documentation , which is aimed at users and customers. Internal documentation is meant for use only inside your business, written to enhance the employee experience. You usually want to host it in a private knowledge base that is accessible only to users with login details.

Types of Internal Documentation

There are a few different types of internal documentation that your organization might come across.

Process Documentation

Process documentation describes company policies, procedures, and processes relating to how work is carried out within the business. It includes how-to guides, best practices, SOPs and checklists that train employees in how to do their jobs.

Project Documentation

Project documentation relates to all the information regarding a particular company project, including project proposals, business plans, strategy, meeting minutes, risk analysis, issue logs, and so on. They may belong to several teams who are collaborating on the project.

Technical documentation describes software and IT infrastructure, product specifications and requirements, development processes, and so on. Technical documentation isn’t just limited to your engineers and may be accessed by product teams, support teams, and more.

HR Documentation

HR documentation is any documentation published by your HR team, from onboarding documentation , company policies, and training materials to employee handbooks . HR documentation often needs to be available for everyone in the company to access when they need to understand company policy .

Also, check out our Guide to Create Technical Specification Document

Benefits of Internal Documentation

Internal documentation has many benefits for companies looking to upgrade their knowledge.

Clear communication and knowledge sharing within the team

First and foremost, documenting your internal knowledge means that communication between teams is enhanced. Companies can benefit from asynchronous communication, with documentation accessible at any time of the day no matter who is on the clock.

Individuals within the company also become aware of what they don’t know that they don’t know because knowledge is easily discoverable. Employees browsing the internal knowledge base can stumble upon previously unknown information because knowledge has been made explicit.

Faster onboarding experience

When new employees have access to internal documentation, they can quickly learn the company’s expectations and policies. Everything they need to know is available in one place, meaning that colleagues need to spend less time training the new hire. Even though activities like mentoring and job shadowing are still important, employees are empowered to take charge of their own learning process. When the onboarding experience is improved, it increases staff retention by 82% . When staff turnover is under control, internal documentation saves your organization money.

Increases productivity

When employees don’t have to spend time hunting down their colleagues for answers to minor questions, their productivity is significantly enhanced. Answers are available at their fingertips, at any time of day even if they wake up in the middle of the night with a burning question.

When information is readily accessed, staff can spend more time on the activities that matter.

Faster decision making

Let’s face it – most problems that are faced in business have already been encountered before. When tasked with making a business decision, employees can learn from their colleagues and expedite the time it takes to conclude.

When employees have access to collective wisdom, decisions can be made in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. Employees can feel confident that they have taken all relevant factors into account because past decisions have been documented.

Avoid technical mistakes

When employees are aware of product specifications and development processes, they are much less likely to make technical mistakes. If your company is involved in building technology products such as software or hardware, specifications and infrastructure need to be documented for all employees who are working on the product.

Documentation means that anyone collaborating on the product can get up to speed on technical matters without having to ask an engineer. You’re protecting your company against liabilities that result from defects in product development.

Better learning experience

When individuals in your company undertake projects or tasks, it makes sense to document your learnings. When employees can learn from past mistakes, this makes team performance much more effective.

Without documenting your learnings, your business risks making the same mistakes over and over again. This wastes valuable time and resources that could be better spent on activities that add value to the business. With internal documentation, teams are much more likely to try new things because they are already aware of what doesn’t work.

Makes information easy to access

As we’ve already mentioned, a lack of internal documentation makes information hard to access. Employees have to hunt through Slack, email chains, or message colleagues, rather than benefiting from the knowledge that is readily available.

Internal documentation means your company knowledge is brought together in a single source of truth , with documents easy to find through performing a simple search. Answers are obtainable in seconds, and employees can be assured that the information is accurate.

Also Read: What is IT Documentation: Types, Examples & Templates

An intuitive internal knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

How to Write Good Internal Documentation

Step 1 – define a clear objective.

First and foremost, you need to get clear on what you want to achieve with internal documentation. This could be something like improving knowledge management , enhancing productivity, or facilitating knowledge sharing .

Documentation is a team effort, so you need to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to creating content. All contributors to the documentation need to be briefed on the aims of the project so they can contribute effectively.

Step 2 – Frame a structure for the content navigation

Every knowledge management project has a structure. When creating your internal documentation, it will likely be in the form of an internal knowledge base with content categories to keep your pages organized.

Go through your knowledge and come up with sensible categories that can be used to group your content. The design should be intuitive and make sense to employees, without nesting your content into too many subcategories. Keep the structure of your knowledge base simple so employees can easily navigate through it when trying to find something.

Step 3 – Design a template

Documentation templates are useful for standardizing your content no matter who is involved in the creation of it. They make it easier to write content by including essential elements such as a table of contents, headings and subheadings, introduction and conclusion, as well as dummy content.

Take the time to create document templates that can be used by your entire team. These can be stored in your knowledge base software and simply copied anytime someone wants to create a new article.

Step 4 – Conduct brainstorming decisions on ideas

Next, is the exciting part. Bring together a team of knowledge champions to brainstorm and come up with ideas for content that should be included in your knowledge base. Invite a mix of individuals from across your organization who should each have a unique perspective on what to include.

While all ideas are good ideas, it’s important to remember not to over-document. If your knowledge base is too complex, it will be hard for employees to find information and to keep content accurate. Aim for conciseness and relevance, not comprehensiveness.

Step 5 – Add text, relevant images and videos

The next step is to actually write your documentation. Naturally, you should follow a style guide and ensure that your documentation is a good reflection of your company’s brand. If you’re writing how-to guides, format your text as step-by-step instructions with numbered lists.

Did you know that documentation doesn’t need to only be written text? If your company has the resources, find relevant images and videos to accompany your text. This will keep your employees more engaged and facilitate different learning styles.

Step 6 – Include special callouts

Most knowledge-base software should allow you to include special callouts for important information such as warnings or points to note. These will usually appear with a different colored background to draw attention to the content and distinguish it from the rest of the article.

It’s especially essential to include callouts in your technical documentation where employees should take note of critical warnings before proceeding. This is to prevent them from running into errors with the technology or potentially crashing the system.

Step 7 – Add links to relevant articles

Using the search function isn’t the only way that employees will find information in your knowledge base . Adding links to relevant articles in your content will direct employees towards further information that may be closer to what they’re looking for.

Interlinking your content is an important way to enable employees to discover knowledge and make full use of your knowledge base. This encourages employees to spend more time on the site and enhances its usefulness.

Step 8 – Review content with peers

When your content is ready, it’s vital to conduct a peer review to check your documentation for accuracy. You should have different types of employees to review your content, such as end users of the documentation and subject matter experts.

No matter how long you spend perfecting your content, it can always benefit from a second pair of eyes to provide the finishing touches. Peer reviewers can tell you whether your documentation makes sense and direct you towards where you can make improvements. Don’t forget this crucial step of the documentation process.

Step 9 – Publish on a central knowledge base

Finally, you’re ready to actually publish your content on a central knowledge base. You should already have chosen the right knowledge base software that can host your documentation and display it for the consumption of the end user.

When your content is live, check the knowledge base to ensure it is displaying properly and looks good on all devices. Make sure images are renderings and videos are loading. You’re probably going to catch last-minute errors with your documentation so go back and fix these as soon as possible.

Check out how to create an internal knowledge base with Document360

Promote your internal documentation as widely as you can within your organization. Encourage feedback from employees and make sure it is a collaborative process.

Step 10 – Monitor, track and maintain the published content

The work doesn’t finish once your knowledge base has been published. Analytics will tell you about user engagement which you can use to improve and refine your content. You can track metrics such as the number of article views, article ratings, and failed searches.

And remember, things will always change in your organization. This means your documentation will need updating. Schedule time at least every quarter to review your knowledge base content and flag articles that are no longer accurate.

Best Practices and Tips for Writing Internal Documentation

Use plain language.

No one wants to read a knowledge base that is full of jargon and acronyms. Employees shouldn’t need a company dictionary to benefit from your documentation. Ensure that you’re writing in plain, everyday language that’s easy to understand. If you must use a technical term, include a definition.

Follow style guide

As we mentioned earlier, make sure you follow a style guide when writing your documentation. Style guides ensure that documentation is standardized, and fits in with your company’s brand. Your style guide can even be included in the knowledge base itself where everyone has access to it.

Ensure clear navigation

Always think about how users are navigating your content, which goes beyond simply providing a search bar. Navigation can include elements like clear menus with categories, but also tables of contents that break down long articles, and breadcrumbs that show you the location of your current page.

Compliment content with images and videos

Images and videos bring your content to life and break up what might otherwise be a wall of text. Using screenshots, for example, can be a great way to show employees how to follow a procedure. Diagrams, on the other hand, can break down a complex process.

Optimize the content with tags and meta descriptions

Think about how your content will be appearing in search for your users. Optimize it with relevant tags and meta descriptions that can be indexed by your search engine and help your users to find relevant content.

Restrict audience when necessary (private documentation)

Some of your content should be restricted to only a few individuals or teams upon publication. Most knowledge-base software should allow you to limit access to content or categories – for example, if you have information on your sales prospects that you want to keep private to your sales team.

Read More: Step-by-Step Guide to Create Sales Documentation

Refresh and update content based on analytics

A knowledge base is never done. Use the in-built analytics of a solution like Document360 to keep your content fresh and relevant for your users. If an article is downvoted, consider revising the content to make it more helpful. If your content is viewed a significant number of times, consider surfacing it on your knowledge base homepage to help more users.

Examples of Internal Documentation

Process documentation.

Here is a sample Process Documentation created in the Document360 portal. The process documentation describes the business process, shows the work flowchart, describes the each step in details with clear definition on responsibility at each step.

Here is a sample Project Documentation created in the Document360 portal. The project Documentation highlights the project plan in detail describing the goal of the project, challenges, existing environment, success metrics, and new requirements.

Employee Handbook

Here is a sample HR Documentation created in the Document360 portal. Many HR documentation types exist, Employee handbook is popular among them. An employee handbook can also be reckoned as an employee guide, staff manual or so.

Wrapping up

Before reading this article, you may have thought creating internal documentation was a chore and better left for another day. Now you know better.

With internal documentation, your employees no longer have to reinvent the wheel. You don’t have to panic when integral employees leave your team for pastures new. You have a collective source of knowledge that anyone in your company can draw from with the result of enhancing productivity and improving collaboration.

To facilitate your internal documentation, you need a robust knowledge base tool such as Document360. It is perfect for any team that wants to create a private knowledge base and restrict access permissions. The editor is so easy to use that your users don’t need a technical degree to write content. 

Also, check out our article on Internal Processes

Interested in Document360 Knowledge base? Schedule a demo with one of our experts

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an example of an internal document.

Process documents, project documentation, Employee timecards and timesheets, production plans, purchase requisitions, receiving reports, sales orders, and scrap authorizations are all examples of internal documentation.

What should be included in an internal document?

Internal documentation comprises how-to guides, best practices, standard operating procedures (SOPs), checklists, project proposals, business plans, strategy, meeting minutes, risk assessments, issue logs, onboarding materials, company policies, and training materials.

What are the types of Internal Documents?

There are several forms of internal documents that your organisation may encounter: Process documentation, project documentation, technical documentation, and HR documentation are all examples of internal documentation.

Jubina Prabhakaran

Aug 18, 2022

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Internal Documentation 101: A Simple Guide to Get You Started

Are you interested in organizing your business’s knowledge into internal documentation? This guide will help you get to grips with the process of documenting your company’s knowledge.

Last Updated

November 22 2022

Every company has a huge amount of knowledge just floating around, hidden in Slack channels and email chains, stored in files and folders, or even inside your employees’ heads. This is not a productive way to deal with company knowledge and leads to wasted time and effort. 

In this article, we will talk about internal documentation best practices, and why it’s important to document your company knowledge. 

What is the Purpose of Internal Documentation

The definition of internal documentation is a written record of your company’s processes that employees can use to complete their work. In contrast to external documentation which is for customers, internal documentation is written only for employees. 

The aim of internal documentation is the process of getting your company’s knowledge together all in one place. Knowledge is documented for the benefit of HR, marketing, sales, development, finance, customer support, and any other team that is part of your company. 

Types of Internal Documentation

There are multiple types of internal documentation that you might come across. 

Team documentation is owned by specific teams in your company. This documentation includes important topics like style guides, meetings, team strategy, and more. 

Project documentation contains information relating to a particular project. Some examples include project roadmaps, project management plan, software documentation , technical documentation , etc.

Process documentation   describes various procedures and workflows needed to properly execute a particular business process. Some examples include standard operating procedures , knowledge maps, etc.

Benefits of Internal Documentation

It’s no secret that many companies feel reluctant to invest in their internal docs. They see it as a waste of time, thinking no one will read it anyway, or think that they don’t need documentation in the first place. 

Indeed, it is true that if your documentation is haphazard, disorganized, and incomplete then employees are not likely to derive much value from it. If you don’t properly invest in your workflows and processes then the documentation you do produce is likely to underperform. 

Top-quality internal documentation is well worth the effort you put into it. Here’s why: 

1. Facilitates Knowledge Transfer 

The average employee spends 20% of work time searching for information or asking coworkers for help. When you encourage employees to create internal documentation, knowledge transfer can happen from one to many. Instead of valuable knowledge residing in employees’ heads, knowledge is shared across the organization for the benefit of everyone. 

2. Prevents Knowledge Loss 

When you fail to document your knowledge, you are in danger of losing vital assets whenever an employee goes on vacation, sick leave, or leaves altogether. Fortune 500 companies lose at least $31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge. Internal documentation means that you retain knowledge for future use, and you are guarding against employee attrition. 

3. Improves Productivity

Without internal documentation, employees have a hard time finding answers to common questions. Having relevant documentation available means that your employees spend less time searching for information, which improves their productivity and team morale. By practicing effective knowledge management, 70% of companies believe they can increase productivity by at least 20% . 

4. Train New Team Members Faster

A great employee onboarding experience means employees will stay with your company for up to three years. When new hires start at your company, senior employees must spend valuable time away from their normal tasks in order to train this new employee. Internal documentation means that new hires can be brought up to speed more quickly without having to take up so much of their coworkers’ time. 

Best Practices for Managing Internal Documentation

We’ll now go through some best practices to help you with managing your internal documentation. 

1. Assess the Documentation You Already Have

When you first start your new project of building your internal documentation, you’re likely to already have many knowledge assets hidden away in various company communication tools. 

Bring these documents together into one place as a starting point for organizing your internal documentation. You’ll need to put in less effort since you won’t be reinventing the wheel, and instead, you’re taking advantage of documentation that already exists. 

If you’re starting from scratch, then first identify which employees are in charge of the processes you're looking to document so you can enlist their help to create documentation. 

2. Assign Knowledge Champions

Documentation isn’t an activity that you should undertake alone. Make sure you’re working with members of every team to create content. After all, these employees are the ones on the front lines who know the documentation best, so they should be responsible for creating it. 

Your employees are not professional technical writers so they are likely to need help with writing content. Establish a content review process so you can take control of the content and make sure it is being written to a good standard. 

3. Plan the Structure of Your Internal Documentation

Your internal documentation needs a structure so employees can browse and discover content easily. The last thing anyone wants is an unstructured mess, which will simply deter employees from using your documentation and have them going back to their old ways. 

It’s important to invest in the information architecture of your internal documentation. Choose sensible categories for your documentation and ensure there is a left-hand navigation bar displaying your content and categories. 

4. Keep it Simple and Accessible

Your number one priority is to get employees to use your documentation regularly. In order to make that possible, your documentation should be simple and accessible. Avoid jargon if possible and use straightforward language that is easy to understand. 

Make sure to structure your articles into sections and subsections, use bulleted lists, and a table of contents for long articles. The whole idea is to make your articles as accessible as possible, making content scannable for your readers and reducing the effort it takes to read your articles. 

5. Choose the Right Documentation Tool

There are a whole plethora of tools out there that you can use for your internal documentation - ranging from document management tools like Google Drive to internal wikis and internal knowledge bases . 

We’d like to take this opportunity to highlight our own knowledge base software Helpjuice, which is a powerful and intuitive platform that is perfect for creating internal docs. The software is so simple you can get started straight away, and you’ll be up and running with new content in minutes. 

Whichever solution you choose, make sure: 

• Content is easy to edit even for non-techie users
• It contains a speedy and comprehensive search function
• It enables you to create intuitive navigation for your docs
• It integrates with other popular tools to optimize your workflows

Your internal documentation won’t work if your employees can’t run searches to find what they’re looking for. A lackluster search and navigation experience undermines the whole purpose of your documentation to begin with. 

The purpose of your internal documentation is to make it easy for employees to find information that they’re looking for and become better at their jobs. To help your docs fulfill their aims, make sure you invest in a robust search and navigation. 

Your search bar should have Google-like capabilities that employees can use to obtain immediate and accurate article recommendations. Interlink individual articles to make sure that employees can discover related content when using your knowledge base. 

6. Don’t Over-Document

You’ll probably find that you have a whole bunch of things you can document. But it’s important to avoid overwhelming your employees with loads of unnecessary content. Just document only the bare minimum that you need for your internal documentation to be effective. 

And that means regularly auditing your documentation to find content that could be removed because it is no longer useful. Don’t keep documentation “just in case” you might need it - be ruthless when pruning your documentation. 

7. Add Visuals to Your Docs

Your documentation is likely to disappoint if it is solely text-based. Adding images and videos, flowcharts and diagrams, will improve the documentation experience and engage your employees more than text alone. 

That being said, don’t rely too much on images and videos - give employees the option not to use them if for whatever reason they prefer not to use visuals. Your documentation text should stand alone and be possible to understand even if the visuals were taken away. 

8. Work From a Style Guide

Your company style guide is a powerful tool for making sure that your documentation remains consistent and on-brand. You’re likely to be having lots of subject matter experts working on your documentation, each of whom writes in a slightly different way, so you need to be able to point them to a style guide. 

When you follow a style guide for your content it makes the user experience much better because employees know what to expect. Without a style guide, content can end up fragmented and confusing. 

9. Keep Your Documentation Updated

Internal documentation is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of exercise. You are never completely “done” with your documentation because it evolves as your organization evolves. Be constantly alert to opportunities to update your docs to keep them in line with company policies and procedures. 

It goes without saying that you need to revisit your internal documentation often. Schedule quarterly audits of all your content so you can determine whether anything is out-of-date or just plain wrong. 

10. Gather Feedback From Your Employees

Don’t passively sit back while employees may or may not use your internal documentation. Actively solicit their feedback so you can get an idea of how well your content is working. Make sure to use a knowledge base  that will allow you to set up a commenting function on each article where employees can take the opportunity to collaborate in real-time.  

Send out regular surveys to employees asking what they think about your internal documentation. Check your knowledge base analytics to find out the terms users are searching for and which ones aren’t turning up any results. 

Wrapping Up

If you don’t follow these best practices, then employees stop using your documentation and your subject matter experts don’t want to write it, since no one uses it anyway. Even if you do follow these best practices, it takes time to change a company culture, and cultivate the right habits.

Internal documentation is a long-term effort that is well worth the energy you spend on it. Making key documentation available means your employees are more productive and your organization is less at risk of losing important knowledge. 

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The Engineer’s complete guide to writing excellent internal documentation

One of the main benefits is that you avoid data and information silos . For example, only one engineer knows the full details of a specific engineering process. What should you do when this engineer is not available? Having these engineering processes documented solves this problem. 

On top of that, internal documentation improves the onboarding time for new employees because they can learn about all relevant processes by reading the documentation. 

This article covers:

Why should you invest in internal documentation?

Best practices when writing internal documentation, how to get started with internal documentation, what is internal documentation.

First, let’s define internal documentation. It describes all processes within your organization. In other words, you write documentation for internal users instead of external users like a guide or tutorial.

Internal documentation encompasses documenting the code review process, project information, or engineering team meeting process. In theory, you can document any process.

It’s not always clear why companies should invest in internal documentation until a crisis happens (and they realize they lack the knowledge to solve the problem in a timely manner). This crisis situation brings us to one of the most important reasons: efficiency.

Internal documentation provides clear process descriptions, which are extremely useful to solve crises. Imagine a situation where your company’s product crashes, and the person who knows the procedure to restore production services is out of office. Obviously, it’s important to restore those services as quickly as possible. However, without the help of this person, it’s almost impossible to accomplish this task. 

In this case, a clear process description solves the problem and gives every DevOps engineer the correct information to restore production services. 

As a side effect, process documentation makes a job less stressful because you can eliminate guesswork.

Improved onboarding speed

When a company hires a new engineer, you want that engineer to become productive as soon as possible. Having all processes documented makes the life of a new engineer and the onboarding mentor a lot easier because they don’t have to spend precious resources explaining undocumented processes. 

A report by the Human Capital Institute mentions that 20% of employee turnover happens within 45 days. In other words, a positive first impression matters. How would you feel when you join a company lacking processes and structure? The quality of your onboarding documentation directly impacts the productivity and happiness of your employees.

Knowledge sharing

It doesn’t make sense for every engineer on the team to know every area of the codebase at all times. However, you should be able to tap into that specialised knowledge whenever you want. 

That’s where documentation comes in, it allows you to tap into specialised knowledge without taking up other people’s time.

Here are a couple of pointers to help you write internal documentation.

Make it insanely easy for anyone to do I’m not joking. The biggest challenge when it comes to writing internal documentation is to actually do it.

The best way to do this is to bring the process into your existing workflow, for engineers and code documentation, this means your IDE.

Code documentation tools like Stepsize allow you document your code with “issues”, directly from your editor. This means that you can create documentation on the fly while you code. It also allows you to link several pieces of code to one issue, which means you won’t have to copy/paste code snippets.

Be precise and detailed

It’s essential to document all steps involved in processes to avoid incomplete documentation. Don’t be afraid to include details. 

For engineering documentation, you can even document the format and style of code comments or how to document features for other developers. Providing a defined format improves quality and eliminates guesswork. Without a defined format, developers might miss crucial details.

It’s also important to describe the different roles and responsibilities, so engineers know who to reach out to in case of problems or questions.

Lightweight and visual

Developers don’t like reading tedious documentation. Why would you create hard-to-read documentation yourself? Make it fun and lightweight to consume internal documentation. 

Two useful tips:

• Include images: Images make it easier to explain processes than text. 
• Split large process documents into smaller processes (or even subprocesses).

Tagging and search

Tagging documents allows users to find the correct information quickly. Again, invest time finding a tool that provides you with searching capabilities. Stepsize allows you to search and find issues across your team or code locations. Another popular tool that lets you tag and search internal documentation is Notion , but it does require context switching from your editor.

To further improve document navigation, cross-link related articles to improve information accessibility.

Regular process testing and maintenance

Lastly, the writing process is only one aspect of building your internal documentation. Don’t forget the maintenance and testing aspects of internal documentation. 

To repeat the production failure situation, you want to frequently test your process documentation to make sure the information is up-to-date. Writing documentation gives organizations a false sense of security. Include process testing and maintenance in your risk management strategy.

When starting with internal documentation, first select a tool that satisfies your needs. Select a tool that allows users to search through documentation to improve process discoverability.

Further, you want to get started with a handful of key processes that hold a lot of value for your engineering team or organization. When you have defined these processes, it’s time to create a template that describes why this process exists, the key stakeholders, and what people need to complete the process. It allows you to get started building your internal documentation quickly.

Again, remember to schedule regular process maintenance and testing meetings! 

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The Sheridan Libraries

• Documenting Research Data
• Sheridan Libraries
• Code Documentation
• Introduction
• Metadata and Metadata Standards
• Tabular Data Documentation
• Medical Research Metadata
• Geospatial Data Documentation

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We are here to help you find, use, manage, visualize and share your data. Contact us  to schedule a consultation. View and register for upcoming workshops . Visit our website to learn more about our services.

Best Practices for Code Documentation

General guidelines and best practices for documenting code:

A Guide to Reproducible Code in Ecology and Evolution : A guide to write reproducible code for researchers in Ecology and Evolution fields, created by  British Ecological Society . Most guidelines can still be applied to other disciplines.  

Best Practices for Scientific Computing : This article is published in PLoS Biology in 2014 and offers several useful best practices for writing reproducible code.   

Style Guides

Guides for R and Python syntax and styles: 

The tidyverse style guide : This style guide is created by Hadley Wickham for R programming language. There are two R packages,  styler  and  lintr , that support this style guide.  

Google’s R style guide : This style guide is a fork from  the tidyverse style guide  above. Google modified it with its internal R user community.     

PEP8 style guide for python code : A style guide for writing Python code on Python’s official website.  

Google’s Python style guides : The style guide created by Google for Python programming language. It is a list of dos and don’ts when programming in Python.  

Write Comments

Tutorials and templates for writing helpful code comments: 

Code Like a Pro:  Comments | How to Write Code Professionally  (With Code Examples): An YouTube video shows how to write good comments for code and how to give good variable/function names so the code is self-explanatory.  

Putting comments in code: the good, the bad and the ugly : An article that discuss documentation comments and clarification comments. 

Choose an open source license for code : Visit this website to view different types of software license and choose one most appropriate for your code. 

My easy R script header template : A R script template with header information and instructions for how to use this template.   

A Python script to create a header for Python scripts : A Python script that can create a header for your own Python scripts. 

Jim's Computer Science Topics  –  Commenting Your Code : A professor, H. James de St. Germain, in the School of Computing, University of Utah created these materials for his computer science course students. The programming languages used in examples are Matlab, C, and Actionscript. 

Writing Comments in Python  (Guide): A guide on  Real Python  about how to write comments for Python code.   

R Markdown is a file format to create interactive documents in R. Such a document can include text,  code chunks and metadata. Other programming languages, such as Python, SQL, D3, can also be documented with R Markdown. 

R Markdown official site :   The office site for R Markdown, with instructions to get started, and gallery, resources to learn more.   

RPubs :  A web space to share R Markdown documents, created by  RStudio . You can also view other people’s R Markdown documents.   

R Markdown: The Definitive Guide : A book written by the creator of R Markdown package,  Yihui Xie . A good reference when writing an R Markdown document.   

R Markdown chapter  in R for Data Science: An R Markdown chapter in the  R for Data Science  book, written by Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund. 

Introduction to R Markdown : A section about R Markdown in  Reproducible Research course  created by  National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS) .  

An R and R Markdown Tutorial : A step-by-step instruction to create an R project and an R Markdown document. This is shared on  RPubs .  

Pimp my RMD: a few tips for R Markdown : This is not a guide for how to write an R Markdown document, but some useful tips to improve the appearance of output documents.  

Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Notebook allows you to create interactive documents in Python. You can embed and execute code within Jupyter Notebooks. Other programming languages, such as R and Julia, can be documented with Jupyter Notebooks as well.  

Jupyter Notebook official site : The official site for Project Jupyter, including documentation, a list of Jupyter community,  nbviewer  for viewing and sharing Jupyter Notebook and the latest information about Project Jupyter.  

Jupyter Notebook: An Introduction  by Real Python: A brief introduction of Jupyter Notebook, including how to get started, elements in a Jupyter Notebook, how to explore a Notebook and Notebook extensions.  

Jupyter Notebook Tutorial: The Definitive Guide  by Data Camp: A tutorial introduces the history of Jupyter Notebook, and how to install, use and create a Notebook document. In addition, it offers tips, best practices and examples of Jupyter Notebook.   

A gallery of interesting Jupyter Notebooks : A list of Jupyter Notebook examples in various disciplines on GitHub. 

Ten simple rules for writing and sharing computational analyses in Jupyter Notebooks : A journal article on PLoS Computational Biology. It provides 10 rules to best sharing data anlaysis in Jupyter Notebooks.  

Guide for Reproducible Research and Data Science in Jupyter Notebooks : A crowdsourced guidelines and tutorials on GitHub for reproducible research in Jupyter Notebooks.    

Best practices and templates for creating a well-structured ReadMe file:  

Choose an open source license for code : Visit this website to view different types of software license and choose one most appropriate for your code. 

How to cite and describe software : Tips to describe and cite software you have used or built your code upon.  

ReadMe 101 : Explain what is a ReadMe file and why you need to create one. Provide several suggestions for a good ReadMe and also a couple templates.   

Art of ReadMe and examples : Provide some best practices tips for creating a good ReadMe, with several examples of ReadMe and a ReadMe checklist. 

A good readme template by PurpleBooth : A good ReadMe template for  GitHub  users. 

A readme template by scottydocs : Another good ReadMe template on GitHub.

Computational physics ReadMe template : A ReadMe template on  GitLab  for researchers work in computational physics field, but could also be expanded to other fields.  

Version Control and Code Repository

Introduction of version control system, why it is important and best practices for version control. In addition, some resources about Git, GitHub and GitHub Desktop including installation instructions, documentation and tutorials. 

Source code management : A tutorial created by  BitBucket  about the importance of source code management, and the benefits and best practices of it.  

Version control concepts and best practices : Professor  Michael Ernst  in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington created this as an introduction to version control concepts and best practices tips for versioning. 

About version control: An introduction to different version control systems on the Git's official site. 

Comparison of centralized and distributed version control systems:

Evolution of version control system

Comparison of version control system tools

The Wikipedia page that compare multiple version control systems

The Git official site : The official site of Git. You can download the latest release version of Git and find documentation and other related information here. 

GitHub Desktop  installation  and  documentation : GitHub Desktop is a graphic user interface (GUI) tool that you can use to interact with GitHub repositories from a local computer.  Here are installation instructions and documentation for how to use GitHub Desktop. 

Git & GitHub Crash Course For Beginners : An YouTube tutorial shows how to install Git and use command lines to do version control.  

GitHub Guides : Online guides for using some basic features of GitHub.  

Happy Git and GitHub for the useR : An online book about how to use Git and GitHub for R users. You will learn how to connect git, GitHub and RStudio.  

GitHub Learning Lab : Many interactive, hands-on tutorials for GitHub learners.    

Resources to learn Git :  A few of resources to learn Git.    

Git and GitHub learning resources : A list of Git and GitHub learning resources in GitHub Documentation. 

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An Easy Guide to Internal Documentation

Learn how to keep your internal documentation organized and up-to-date with simple templates and best practices.

Over time, every company accumulates a wealth of valuable information, from industry know-how and customer knowledge to procedures and best practices.

Unfortunately, at many companies, this knowledge remains undocumented , scattering across Slack, archived email threads, and disconnected docs. As a result, employees end up repeating each other's mistakes, trying to "reinvent the wheel" when solving problems, and wasting hours every week searching for the information they need.

Internal documentation may seem like a tedious chore — until the time comes when you actually need it and it becomes a lifesaver. In this article, we'll dive deeper into what internal documentation actually is, why it's important, and how to turn it into a real asset.

What is internal documentation?

Internal documentation types, why internal documentation is worth your time, tips for writing internal documentation.

Internal documentation is a written record of your company's internal processes, guidelines, procedures, and best practices, that your team can use as a reference to get their work done. Unlike external documentation, which is intended for your users and customers, internal documentation is written exclusively for your own employees. But while your customers will never see your internal docs, it's just as important to keep them organized, accurate, and up-to-date.

"Internal documentation" is an umbrella term that includes a variety of different documents and artifacts. Any piece of internal information you might want to reference in the future deserves to be a part of your internal documentation . It is not limited to just pages of text and can come in many forms. Anything from diagrams and checklists to video tutorials and images can be considered documentation.

When people talk about internal documentation, they often think of IT and software documentation . However, internal documentation is not limited to technical docs, and all teams across your entire company can benefit from this practice.

Let's go over the most common internal documentation types and examples.

Process documentation

Process documentation is the type of internal documentation that describes company processes, procedures, and workflows. That includes standard operating procedures (SOPs) , checklists, how-to guides, tutorials, and so on.

Here's an example of a documented process in Nuclino , a unified workspace for all your team's knowledge, docs, and projects – create an account to start creating your own internal documentation:

Nuclino can be used exclusively as an internal process documentation tool , but it's a highly versatile solution that is capable of much more. It offers a variety of ways to structure and organize your work, including a nested list, a Kanban board , a table, and a mindmap-style graph. This makes Nuclino a great solution for project collaboration , sprint planning , new employee onboarding , asynchronous communication , and more. It works like a collective brain, allowing you to bring all your team's work together in one place and collaborate without the chaos of files and folders, context switching, or silos.

Project documentation

Project documentation includes all the internal documents created over the course of a project. It can come in many forms, from project proposals and business cases, to project plans and meeting minutes . These documents help clarify project objectives, plan and assign resources, and keep all project stakeholders aligned.

Technical documentation

Internal technical documentation captures product requirements , internal infrastructure, architecture, development processes, source code, FAQs, and so on. A common misconception about the Agile approach to documentation is that internal documentation is unnecessary. And while it's true that the Agile methodology aims to keep documentation to a minimum, doing away with it altogether inevitably results in many lost people hours.

HR documentation

HR documentation includes all the documentation the HR team creates to document their workflows and share information with the rest of the company. This includes employee training materials, onboarding checklists , offboarding guides , HR policies , recruiting and candidate screening guidelines, employee handbooks , and more.

Team-specific documentation

To get things done, every team at a company needs to create a certain amount of documentation. This includes team OKRs, style guides, organizational charts, canned responses, and more. These types of documents are usually only relevant to the members of a particular team and don't need to be shared company-wide — for example, your marketing team's social media management guidelines, blog style guide, link-building strategies , or content marketing best practices.

Let's be honest — documentation is no one's favorite task . Most do it sloppily just to cross it off their to-do list, while many neglect documenting their work altogether. There is no shortage of excuses we give ourselves for avoiding documentation:

"No one reads these docs."

"We have more important things to do."

"We are doing Agile now."

It's true that if your documentation is inaccessible, outdated, or disorganized, there will be little value in it. Without a proper workflow in place, creating documentation just for the sake of having it is indeed a waste of time.

But that doesn't mean that documentation in general is useless. Informative and easy-to-navigate internal documentation has numerous benefits:

Internal documentation boosts employee productivity

Without internal documentation, finding the information you need can be a challenge. What is the company overtime policy? How to troubleshoot this issue? What is our content review process? Documenting this knowledge allows your team to get things done without asking repetitive questions or repeating each other's mistakes.

New team members get up to speed faster

When a new member joins your team, they have a lot to learn about your company policies, workflows, and tools. Without internal documentation, they are left to hunt for tribal knowledge on Slack and tap on shoulders whenever they have a question. While documentation doesn't replace employee onboarding , it helps you streamline the process.

Internal knowledge is shared and retained

When experienced employees quit or retire, they take their knowledge with them unless it's been documented. Making up for that "brain drain" is not cheap. It has been estimated that it costs more than $30,000 to replace a member of staff.

Simply "having" internal documentation is not enough to make these benefits a reality. In order to be effective and create real value, your documentation needs to be:

Comprehensive

And while creating and maintaining such high-quality documentation may sound like a lot of work, it's not as challenging as you might think. Here are a few tips and best practices that can make your job a lot easier.

Choose the right documentation tool

There are many different tools and platforms you can use for your internal documentation – document collaboration tools , such as Google Docs or Confluence (and a variety of Confluence alternatives ), different types of internal wikis and internal knowledge bases , intranet portals , and more.

An ideal internal documentation tool should:

Be easily editable even by non-technical users, ideally, in real time .

Provide a fast and reliable search function.

Have intuitive navigation .

Make it easy to organize content .

Integrate with other tools to keep all your project assets in sync.

Have a single source of truth

Whichever documentation tool you pick, the important thing is to select one solution and not let your documentation spread across multiple tools. Consolidate all answers in one place and give your team a single source of truth.

Don't expect people to be willing to waste time hunting through outdated or duplicated Confluence pages, random Google Drive folders, or stale emails. Enable them to look things up quickly and effortlessly – which can only be achieved if all answers are in one place.

Keep your internal documentation lightweight

Don't document just for the sake of having comprehensive documentation. Creating top-notch documentation doesn't mean documenting every single detail. The more bloated your internal documentation becomes, the harder it gets to maintain it and keep it up-to-date. Your team is also unlikely to want to read through pages and pages of text when they need a quick answer.

Be thorough but also concise. Document what you need and only what you need , with a clear purpose and audience in mind and without going into more detail than required. Avoid long multi-page documents that cover broad topics, keep your docs short and specific, writing in the form of bite-sized nuggets of information.

Use visuals

Show, don't just tell. Instead of relying solely on text, use screenshots, flowcharts, mockups — whatever makes sense in the context and helps illustrate your point.

Some documentation tools, such as Nuclino, allow you to embed interactive media content directly into your docs, including videos, GIFs, maps, slides, and diagrams created in Miro , Diagrams.net , Lucidchart , Gliffy , or Google Drawings .

Create living documents

Things change and processes evolve, and your internal documentation needs to keep up. Make it as easy as possible to keep your docs up-to-date. That means no PDFs or static wikis — instead, create easily editable, collaborative documents.

And keep in mind that managing internal documentation is not a one-man job. Enable your team members to contribute and leave feedback whenever they come across something that is outdated or inaccurate.

Appoint content curators

Writing documentation is a collaborative process that should involve your entire team. But things can quickly become chaotic without some form of content validation. Appoint topic experts or owners to curate the documentation, answer questions, and handle feedback.

Creating internal documentation is not a one-time project. It needs to be a continuous process that will require a certain amount of time and effort. And writing it is only half the challenge — getting people to read your docs can be just as tough.

Without the right process, it's easy to end up in a vicious circle: writers don't feel it's worth their time to properly document stuff since no one's going to read it anyway, and readers never bother reading the documentation since it's always incomplete or of low quality.

It is not a problem that can be easily solved overnight — changing the company culture and developing the right habits may take time and patience. But it pays off, and if done right, internal documentation can be one of the most effective tools for boosting employee productivity.

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[INTERSPEECH 2024 Series #2] NL-ITI: Enhancing LLM Truthfulness Through Internal Modifications

Introduction

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in our daily lives, ensuring that these systems behave safely and align with our values and needs is crucial. This concept, known as AI Alignment, goes beyond technical reliability—it's about controlling how AI models like Large Language Models (LLMs) behave, ensuring they act in ways that are consistent with our expectations. For brands like Samsung, this means making sure that AI-driven products provide accurate information and uphold the brand's reputation by handling sensitive issues with care. AI Safety is essential in maintaining trust between users and technology, whether it's through customer service chatbots, virtual assistants like Bixby, or other AI applications.

AI Alignment isn’t just about truthfulness. There are broader applications where we might want to influence or "bias" LLMs to behave in specific ways. For example, an LLM could be guided to adopt a kinder tone in customer interactions or even be customized to exhibit a particular personality type that suits a brand's identity. Techniques that allow for the control of AI models are becoming increasingly important as we seek to deploy AI systems that are not only effective but also aligned with human values and corporate goals.

Traditional methods like fine-tuning—where models are adjusted with additional training data—often fall short in achieving these nuanced objectives. They may not fully address how the model internally processes information, leading to inconsistent or undesirable outputs. This is where representation engineering, including techniques like the Non-Linear Inference Time Intervention (NL-ITI), comes into play. NL-ITI offers a way to modify the internal workings of LLMs, allowing us to guide their behavior to make them more truthful.

The NL-ITI method enhances the Inference Time Intervention (ITI) paradigm, which was designed to improve LLM outputs by modifying internal model activations during inference. The ITI method unfolds in two phases. Initially, linear probing models are trained on the representations returned by the attention heads for a given probing trainset. The probing operation, as mathematically described in the equation below, uses labeled data (e.g., question-answer pairs) to identify attention heads that store truthful information. The probing model is defined as:

Where θ represents a set of trainable parameters of linear probe model and x is the vector representation that corresponds to a token at a specific attention head and layer. The accuracy of this probing model is assumed to correlate with the amount of desired knowledge, such as truthfulness, encoded in the attention heads.

During the second phase, the ITI framework intervenes by shifting the activations of these selected attention heads in the truthful direction during inference. The intervention is defined as:

Where x is embedding corresponding to l-th token, θ represents the intervention biasing vector and α is the intervention strength.

The ITI approach identifies specific attention heads that are hypothesized to store relevant information, such as truthfulness, and intervenes by shifting their activations. However, the original ITI method relies on a linear probing model, which may not fully capture the complexity of the concept representations within the model. NL-ITI introduces two key improvements to address these limitations. First, it replaces the linear probing model with a non-linear probe, which has a higher capacity for capturing complex information. This change allows for a more appropriate choice of attention heads (Figure 1), that is crucial for directing the model towards generating more truthful and accurate responses.

Figure 1. Probing accuracy for each attention head of the LLM on TruthfulQA dataset for linear probing (ITI) – bottom, and non-linear probing (NL-ITI) – top. Accuracy results are ‘smoothed’ between neighboring attention heads (lower standard deviation).

Second, NL-ITI extends the intervention biasing vector to consider an average of vector representations of multiple tokens, rather than focusing solely on the last token from question-answer pair. This multi-token approach captures a more comprehensive context, enabling more effective interventions that enhance the truthfulness of the model’s outputs. From many experiments that we performed, those two modifications resulted in most significant quality improvement.

The results of implementing NL-ITI are compelling and demonstrate its potential for improving LLM behavior in practical, brand-sensitive applications. When tested against popular benchmarks, including TruthfulQA, OpenBookQA, and MMLU, NL-ITI consistently delivered better performance than the original ITI method. For example, on the TruthfulQA benchmark, NL-ITI achieved a significant 14% improvement in the MC1 score—a measure of accuracy—over the baseline ITI approach (Table 1., Figure 1.).

Table 1. Comparison between baseline (LLaMA-2-chat-7B model, TruthfulQA dataset), ITI and NL-ITI. Compared values have all been achieved with few-shot-prompting.

Figure 2. How MC1 correlates with KL divergence. The results were collected for ITI and NL-ITI using different hyperparameter sets (α, heads to intervene) for TruthfulQA and OpenBookQA datasets. On each benchmark, baseline LLaMA-2-7B performance is shown.

Moreover, NL-ITI’s ability to generalize across out-of-distribution benchmark was tested. The method outperformed ITI, demonstrating better adaptability and robustness (Table 2). These results underscore NL-ITI’s effectiveness not only in improving truthfulness but also in enhancing the overall reliability of LLMs across diverse scenarios.

Table 2. Comparison of generalization of ITI and NL-ITI on out-of-distributions benchmarks: AI2’s Reasoning Challenge, Massive Multitask Language Understanding, and OpenBookQA.

For a brand like Samsung, these improvements mean that AI-driven customer interactions can be both more accurate and brand-safe, whether through a virtual assistant like Bixby or in other sensitive applications. By ensuring that AI systems provide consistent, truthful, and aligned responses, NL-ITI helps protect the brand’s reputation and enhances user trust, making it a valuable tool in the ongoing development of AI technologies.

Link to the paper

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.18680

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Corporate Influences on Science and Health—the Case of Spinal Cord Stimulation

• 1 School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• 2 Center for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora

Corporations have been developing tactics to undermine independent science for decades. 1 In the 1950s, on learning of the damaging effects of tobacco on health, the tobacco industry used campaigns of criticism to defend their products and the substantial revenue they were generating. Corporations could effectively cast doubt over any unfavorable findings by creating industry-funded counterevidence (original studies and reviews), supporting researchers to write criticisms, and providing a venue for publication in industry-sponsored journals. These tactics and others extended beyond the tobacco industry: pharmaceutical, lead, vinyl chloride, and silicosis-generating industries have all used similar approaches to protect profits. 2 Recently, we have observed some of the same tactics used by the spinal cord stimulator industry.

Read More About

Traeger AC , Bero LA. Corporate Influences on Science and Health—the Case of Spinal Cord Stimulation. JAMA Intern Med. 2024;184(2):129–130. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6962

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Press Release

Automatic image recognition to identify types of wood, harnessing ai to fight global deforestation.

Research News / September 02, 2024

The new European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is intended to prevent goods marketed in the EU from contributing to the spread of deforestation. When a wood product is brought into the EU market, for example, there must be documentation of which types of wood were used to produce it, along with proof of their legal origin. Depending on the material, even the initial review of the declared type of wood is no easy task. Paper, for example, requires time-consuming examination by specialists. Now, a new AI-based analytical tool for determining wood types is being developed to simplify and accelerate this process. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM are working closely with the Thünen Institute of Wood Research to develop the automated image recognition system for large-scale review of declarations of wood type.

Illegal logging is one of the consequences of rising global demand for lumber. The European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR), the predecessor of the EUDR, entered into force back in 2013 with the aim of curbing the unlawful use of wood. Since then, commercial enterprises have been required to document the types of wood used in their products and their origins, thereby demonstrating the legal origins of the wood used in goods they import into the EU market. The same applies to wood products such as particle board, fiberboard, paper, and cardboard. But how can the types of wood used in fiber materials be identified without a doubt?

As things currently stand, responsibility for examining wood products falls to people such as the employees of the Thünen Institute, a research institute in the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). They receive numerous product samples from industry and government agencies so they can check the types of wood used — and the numbers are rising. The samples are then sent for expert analysis under a microscope, which is an extremely time-consuming process. With paper and fiberboard, the wood cells are separated from the material, dyed and then prepared on a slide. The cells can then be classified based on their appearance when viewed through a microscope. But because this preparation and examination process is so time-consuming and more and more samples are coming in for testing, the specialists can only handle a limited number of expert reports. A new AI-based analytical tool is being developed to help with this situation by relieving some of the workload on highly qualified experts, accelerating and automating the examination process, and enabling fast, efficient controls. Researchers from Fraunhofer ITWM and the Thünen Institute of Wood Research in Hamburg have teamed up in the KI_Wood-ID project, using machine learning to develop the new automated image recognition system to identify types of wood. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).

Algorithms to curb the illegal lumber trade

The researchers’ first area of focus in the project is hardwoods, especially those originating from plantations grown worldwide for cellulose production. Artificial intelligence can be used to determine the type of wood based on vascular tissue, which varies in cell structure, shape, and size. Using reference preparations from the Thünen Institute’s vast collection of wood samples, the researchers from Fraunhofer ITWM are training neural networks until the AI is capable of independently identifying and classifying the characteristic features of particular species so it can detect the types of wood present in the microscopic image of an unknown sample. Training for each different category, such as birch, beech, and poplar, takes place separately. In the individual images, the analytical tool first marks the cells that are key to identifying the particular types of wood. “A sample is considered anomalous if it contains characteristics that don’t match the declared types of wood,” says Dr. Henrike Stephani, the KI_Wood-ID project manager and deputy head of the Image Processing department at Fraunhofer ITWM in Kaiserslautern.

The overarching goal, she says, is to use AI to strengthen the legal wood trade and consequently protect consumers. Ramin is one kind of wood that is under special protection. Ramin forests are a key habitat for orangutans in places like Borneo. “A few years back, chips of this type of wood were sent to the Thünen Institute for identification after Greenpeace collected them from the warehouse at a pulp mill in Asia,” Stephani explains. “If not only wood from plantations but also protected or endangered species like ramin are processed into pulp and then paper, the goal is to use our method to identify those cells in the final product and hold the manufacturers responsible.”

Preventing deforestation around the world

An initial prototype of the analysis system has been trained on reference samples to the point that it can already identify eleven types of hardwood. The next step will involve identifying softwood. The prototype, which features a graphical user interface (GUI), is initially available to the Thünen Institute. In the long term, the AI-based image recognition tool is to be rolled out to support testing labs and government agencies worldwide in monitoring the international wood trade. “Ultimately, deforestation and the illegal timber trade can only be prevented at the global level, so we hope testing organizations that are approved worldwide will be able to benefit from our system in the future,” Stephani says.

• Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM  (itwm.fraunhofer.de)
• Research News September 2023 — Harnessing AI to Fight Global Deforestation [ PDF  0,39 MB ]