# DITA Best Practices : Concepts

Created by Kelly Mankenberg, last modified by Todd Stupnik on Nov 05, 2014

Concept topics are specialized from the base topic information type. They include the standard topic elements, including the short description, prolog, a body, and related links.

For more information on creating a concept, see Creating a concept.

### The purpose of the concept information type

Concepts provide background that helps readers understand essential information about a product, a task, a process, or any other conceptual or descriptive information. A concept may be an extended definition of a major abstraction such as a process or function. Conceptual information may explain the nature and components of a product and describe how it fits into a category of products. Conceptual information helps readers to map their knowledge and understanding to the tasks they need to perform and to provide other essential information about a product, process, or system.

### Structure of a concept topic

The only required elements in a concept are the title and the conbody. A simple concept includes a title and one or more paragraphs in the conbody.You can include additional structural elements such as paragraphs, sections, examples, and lists. Start a new DITA concept topic by choosing File/New/Concept.

Base Structure

The image displays the base structure of a concept topic:

Introductory syntax: upon creating your concept, the XML declaration appears, identifying the file as an XML document. The DTD declarion points to the DTD declaration points to the DTD used to validate your topic structure. The DTD declaration includes a relative patch to your DITA concept DTD. The <concept> element is the root container for all other elements and identifies the topic as a concept topic.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

    <!DOCTYPE concept PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">

When creating a concept, Oxygen will assign an ID attribute and value to the concept element.

    <concept id="concept_zwk_bkc_sp">

Element | Function
--- | ---
Title | Enter a title using the <title/> tag. The title is the first content unit you include in every topic.
Shordesc | This is an optional step. Enter a <shortdesc/> tag. The short description briefly introduces the content of your concept topic; However, it is recommended to keep it short, approximately one paragraph long, because the contents of this element is often used during navigation.
Prolog | This is an optional step. Add a <prolog/> tag. The prolog consists of author metadata (using the <author>) element.
Conbody | The <conbody> element is a container for most of the content in the concept topic.
Paragraph | The <p> element is considered a basic block element. The <p> element identifies a string of text that has a single main idea.
Note | The <note> element identifies content that appears in a different format from the default of a document and draws attention to a point.
Lists (unordered) | The <ul> container consists of individual <li> elements; the <ul> element identifies a collection of items in which the order is not relevant. The <li> element contains content that has a single main idea within a list. If a <li> element is contained in an <ol> element, the <li> element is usually displayed as a numbered list (using traditional numbering, roman numerals, or alphabetical characters in order). If the <li> element is contained in a <ul> element, the <li> element is usually displayed as a bullet or dash.

For further reading, see DITA Primer (Learn the Basics): http://www.publishingsmarter.com/resources/books-and-articles/dita-primer-learn-dita

## Attachments:

Concept.png (image/png)