The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has concluded its work with the completion of Specification Guidelines, issued as a W3C Recommendation. This document provides clear instructions to writers and editors on how to create technical specifications that are precise and clear.
W3C launched the QA Activity in 2001, following a successful workshop, with the following goal: to improve W3C specifications by offering guidelines to W3C groups, by reviewing draft specifications for adherence to these guidelines, and by helping W3C groups develop test suites and other tools to promote interoperable implementations.
Since that time, the QA Working Group has produced six documents, including the new recommendation - Specification Guidelines. By identifying requirements and "good practices", these guidelines help both W3C and other specification authors create and describe technologies in ways that make it easier for developers to implement them as intended. The QA Working Group has also put together templates for writing conformance clauses as well as full specifications.
In addition the group has published the QA Framework Primer, QA Test FAQ, the Variability in Specifications Working Draft and the QA Handbook. One of the group's most famous and useful documents is the W3C Quality Assurance Matrix, a list of more than a hundred W3C specifications, which includes links to conformance clauses, test suites and validators.