How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?

[Ned Bedinger]

Butler, Darren J Ctr 584 CBSS/GBHAC wrote:
> 
> The general rule for most military documents is a primary heading with
> no more than 4 subordinates. The philosophy is this; if the information
> is well-organized, you shouldn't need a 5th level. 

The philosophy is a suggestion (in the hypnotic sense) that we writers 
let the readers do some of the work of understanding what they read. It 
serves as a reminder that (some) audiences have very plastic 
intelligence--they'll get their heads around many levels of depth beyond 
3 or 5, even when the deep information is structured and presented as 
only 3 or 5 levels of information in the document they're reading.

So anyway, I think the levels limit is one of those rare and beautiful 
insights into the cognitive abilities that accompany reading skills. At 
least on this point, we can lay down the burden of guiding readers every 
micro-step of the way :-)


Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com