All documentation projects need to choose a documentation authoring format. This format needs to be easy for authors and editors to use. It should work with their existing tools and shouldn't get in their way. It should also be expressive enough to allow for a full range of description. Finally the format should be able to work with CVS and should be transformable into a variety of reading formats such as HTML and PDF.

For almost all documentation projects, structured text will be a good choice. A few projects such as API documentation may be better served by another format.

The manager of the documentation project is responsible for choosing the documentation authoring format.