The standard outline presented here in different forms is a tool
that Doug Niehaus has employed with most of his technical writing
and that of his students since the middle of 1997. It is relevant
for a wide range of, but not every single, type of technical paper.
It is certainly appropriate for Master's and Ph.D. theses, for
conference and journal papers, and for technical reports. It is
also appropriate for proposals, although the speculative nature
of a project or thesis proposal requires some adaptation of the
form. It is less appropriate for user documentation, but still
explicitly represents a number of important issues which must be
handled when writing product manuals.