# DITA Best Practices : Identifying the Information Type

Created by Todd Stupnik on Dec 23, 2014

Concept, task and reference topics contain different types of content. Concept topics contain explanations, task topics contain procedural steps, and reference topics contain tabular look-up information.

An important skill of an author working in a DITA environment is typing information correctly into information types.

Of the three base DITA information types:

- Concept topics are used for overviews of tasks or overviews of reference information. They tend to be short and simple.
- Task topics contain procedural steps.
- Reference topics detail properties and other reference (as opposed to narrative) information, typically in tabular form.

In some types of documents, an instruction may be described with a set of concept, task and reference topics. For example, the use of a car's alarm system may be covered by:

- "Alarm systems" (concept)
- "Setting the alarm" (task)
- "Alarm codes" (reference)

Such a set of topics would be associated using a reltable, so that the topics would be linked or associated in the deliverable document. A typical procedure will require a concept topic and a task topic, and may require a reference topic.

While task information is generally easy to identify, it can be difficult to distinguish concept from reference information. Table 1 explains some of the characteristics of concept topics compared with reference topics.

Table 1. Characteristics of concept and reference topics
| Concept | Reference
--- | --- | ---
Purpose/Function | Explanatory | Fact
Access Frequency | A few times | Repeatedly, when needed
Book Context | Front, Middle | Back
Content or Data | Content | Data