15. A system for creating documentation, comprising: a memory storage device operable to store in a data store a plurality of document schemas, each document schema corresponding to a topic of a writing pattern provided by an authoring tool as a guide for a writer to author at least a portion of a document, each of the document schemas comprising a plurality of elements corresponding to a plurality of components of the writing pattern, each writing pattern corresponding to each of the document schemas is associated with several of distinct topic types, the topic types including at least one of questions for answering business-use and system-constraint questions about a task or function, conceptual information, examples of how to achieve a specific result, or definitions of at least one of application-specific words, phrases, or common business terms that have specific meaning, each component of the plurality of components corresponds to at least a portion of a document; at least one input device; and at least one processor operable to: for each of a plurality of documents: receive user selection of a component of a particular writing pattern corresponding to a visual element of a visual representation of a corresponding document schema, the visual representation including a plurality of graphic pairs each having an opening graphic and a closing graphic; receive user input representative of content for the selected visual component corresponding to the selected element; and add information corresponding to the user input to the document according to the corresponding document schema; and associate the added information from the plurality of documents together in a document collection.
17. The system of claim 15 , said at least one processor is operable to, upon receiving the user selection of the element, provide the user an indication corresponding to the element of how to author the content.