Source material
Upload your documents is the least useful instruction in this category
Every document you already have will produce a different kind of wrong answer, and the reason is nearly always the same: a passage lifted out of it reads as complete when it is not. A returns window three headings above its own exclusions answers confidently and wrongly. These pages take one document at a time and set out what to change about its structure before you index it.
Policies
Written to be defensible, read by somebody who wants one sentence.
- a returns policyWhy a passage about the return window answers confidently without the exclusions, and how to restructure the document so it cannot.
- a cancellation policyNotice periods are relative to something the passage does not carry. How to write a cancellation policy that survives being read in pieces.
- warranty termsThree warranties get conflated by customers. How to separate them, state the void conditions, and write what parts and labour excludes.
- a booking policyMost booking policies are written for staff. Here is how to restructure one so the answers a guest actually needs are present in the text.
- terms and conditionsNumbered clauses that reference each other by number mean nothing once a passage is retrieved alone. What to publish alongside them instead.
- a privacy noticeIt is written for a regulator and read by a customer asking two questions. How to make the notice answer those two without losing accuracy.
Prices, stock and hours
The documents most likely to be a table, and tables are where meaning leaks out.
- a pricing pagePrices that only exist in an interactive component are not in the text at all. How to publish pricing an assistant can quote without inventing.
- a shipping and delivery tableA zone by service grid loses its meaning one row at a time. How to write delivery information that survives being split into passages.
- opening hours and locationsThe easiest question to get wrong. Hours in an image, five stale copies, and kitchen times that differ from door times, all fixed at the source.
- a product spec sheetEvery value on a spec sheet depends on the model name at the top. What to repeat, what to spell out, and why a downloadable sheet is never read.
- a spreadsheet of productsA row of raw values shares no words with the question that should find it. How to give every row a sentence before you upload the file.
- an FAQ pageUsually the best material a business has and the worst structured. Accordions, one huge page, and answers that say see above, all repaired.
- a price list published as an imageA menu or fee schedule saved as a picture is read by nothing: not an assistant, not a screen reader, not search. How to republish it as text.
Documentation
Where a step only makes sense after the three above it.
- an onboarding guideOnboarding guides are sequences. Retrieval hands back a middle. Here is how to rewrite the steps, the prerequisites and the screenshots.
- a troubleshooting articlePeople paste the error text. If your article never quotes it verbatim, it is invisible. How to restructure symptoms, causes and decision trees.
- an API referenceGenerated reference pages are mostly boilerplate, which makes every passage look alike. Fix the tables, the examples and the version paths.
- a changelogRelease notes record moments. Questions are about now. How to stop an assistant quoting a change that was later reverted or superseded.
- supplier and manufacturer copyBorrowed product copy becomes your promise the moment it is cited. Which parts are safe to index, which are a liability, and how to tell them apart.
Files and internal spaces
Material that was never written for a customer, or never written as text at all.
- a PDF manualA linked PDF is never crawled and a scanned one yields nothing. What to do about page furniture, columns, split tables and size.
- a knowledge base spaceInternal spaces are full of shorthand, owner names and links customers cannot open. What to export, what to rewrite, and what to leave behind.
- a staff handbookThe handbook answers customer questions in the second person, with pay and discipline bound in beside them. What to extract and what to leave.
- a library of email templatesThe replies your team already sends are the strongest material you own. How to strip the merge fields and separate policy from a one-off gesture.
- a form and application packVisitors ask how to fill in section C, not what you do. The guidance notes are the answerable half, and usually the part nobody publishes.
- meeting notes and announcementsA notice that was accurate in March is still confidently answering in November. How to scope announcements, retire them, and handle minutes.
The one rule underneath all of them
Write so that any single section could be read out on its own by somebody who has not seen the rest of the page. That is not a stylistic preference, it is a description of how the document will actually be consumed: a handful of passages are selected by meaning and handed over without their neighbours.
Everything else on these pages is that rule applied to a specific document. Conditions next to what they modify, table headers repeated in the row, definitions in the sentence rather than at the top of the file.
24 document types covered.