Re: Consistency in headings

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Nandini Garud wondered: <<... which kind of headings are in vogue right 
now? ... Numbered 2.3.5 with indented text that makes page narrow, or 
non-numbered which guides through font size and placement of 
headings.>>

Numbered headings have their place; for example, lawyers who need to 
memorize complex legislation and engineers who need to memorize 
technical specifications are familiar with this style and seem to use 
it effectively. (Though I'll bet nobody has ever studied whether this 
is actually the case. I found the legislation I studied in university 
universally badly written and badly laid out.)

But for ordinary mortals like you and me, the numbers serve little 
purpose. Case in point: If I ask anyone on this list to tell me what 
heading 2.3.5 refers to, the best anyone will be able to tell me that 
it's a third level heading. In short, the number tells us nothing that 
the formatting as a level three heading tells us. Though it makes that 
position more obvious (assuming readers actually care), it still tells 
us nothing about the semantics of the heading that we won't get from 
the words that follow the numbers. That makes it redundant.

My take on this is that in most cases, any design that requires more 
than 4 levels is probably deeply flawed and in need of simplification. 
Why? Because most people won't be able to reconstruct where they are in 
the heading hierarchy at 4 levels, let alone with more levels. And if 
you can design based on 4 levels, you don't need numbers to communicate 
the hierarchy.

<<I always felt the gerunds (mnemonic: g at the end) such as opening, 
connecting gave an illusion of action.>>

That's why they work so well.

<<"How to open"... construct is wordy and takes more real estate. 
However, these can be easily ported into FAQs.>>

Into bad FAQs, perhaps. If you have 20 "how to" headings, how do 
readers skim through them efficiently? You're forcing the readers to 
read 40 extra words (20 headings times two useless words); the gerund 
form takes up only 1 word ("creating...") rather than 3 words ("how to 
create"), so it's more efficient. If the whole purpose of the FAQ is 
"how do I?" then why is it necessary to repeat the "how do I" for each 
heading?

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Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
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