Context-Specific Guidelines

Configuring Guidelines to Be Context-Specific

Context-specific guidelines are guidelines that only apply in certain contexts such as titles or lists. For example, suppose that you work with DITA and have specific style guidelines for writing tasks. You might want to ensure that authors always use the imperative when writing procedures. Similarly, you might decide that the imperative tense is optional when writing conceptual content. You can configure the "use imperative" guideline so that it only applies to text that is written as a command within a procedure.


To define a context, you give the context a name and define how Acrolinx should identify the context. You define how to identify the contexts by listing the different names that a context could have in your document type.

For example, suppose that you’re defining the "title" context for Word documents. You might consider a title to be any text that has a style with the word "Title" or "Heading" in the style name. You might define all possible style names that Acrolinx should treat as a title. You can also use wildcards in the name to match part of a style name. If you work with XML documents, you can use XPath expressions to pinpoint the exact location of a context.

You can create contexts in your Content Profiles.

Enabling or Disabling a Guideline for a Specific Context

You can enable or disable a guideline for a specific context. For example, you can configure a guideline so that it’s enabled for the "Title" context only. Alternatively, you could configure a guideline so that it’s enabled everywhere except the "Title" context. In this case, you would disable the guideline for the "Title" context.

To enable or disable a guideline for a specific context, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Guidance Settings Guidelines.
  2. Select a writing guide from the Writing Guide list.
  3. In the Configure Your Guidelines section, find the guideline that you want to change.
    • Use the Filter field to filter the guideline list by guideline name.
      The guideline list is filtered as soon as you start to type characters in the Filter field.
    • Select the Grammar or Style radio buttons to show only grammar or style guidelines.
  4. Select the radio button in the Contextual column.
  5. In the Select Contexts dialog box, configure the context-specific settings.
    • Select whether you want to enable or disable the guideline in the selected contexts.
    • In the Contexts field, select the contexts that are relevant for your chosen guideline.
  6. In the Select Contexts dialog box, click OK and on the Guidelines page, click Save.
    Your changes take effect immediately.