Multi-use: Reshaping technical material

The multi-use concept involves reshaping existing technical material for a variety of audiences and applications including reports, brochures, conference papers, magazine articles, and seminars. Companies typically develop these forms independently, even when they cover the same subject. Multi-use eliminates this duplication of effort by developing new forms from old. This represents a significant cost and time savings, a savings that can be increased if a technical writer, rather than an engineer or a scientist, performs the conversion. This article discusses multi-use, presents some guidelines for converting one form into another, and provides an example that illustrates how a document can be reshaped into a variety of forms for various purposes.