How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?

[Ned Bedinger]

Raj Machhan wrote:
> I guess the primary objective of any technical document is to present
> information in a manner that is simple and easy to understand. 

I think I disagree.  The primary objective of a technical document is to 
be right and not wrong. Simple and easy to understand are things that 
make documents more likely to be read, but rightness is what gives a 
nominal technical document its value.

> Any document,
> regardless of the complexity of its subject, having more than four levels
> has a problem with its structure. 

I don't think that all audiences have extreme prejudice against more 
than a few heading levels in the text of a technical document. Do you 
feel that there's something intrinsically ambiguous or disorienting 
about additional heading levels beyond four?

I find that people who deal with structured information in thinking, 
programming, writing, etc, are usually comfortable at depths below three 
or four numbered heading levels.

On the other hand, the effort required to design more than a few 
visually distinctive heading levels might stop most of us from trying to 
represent more than a few. I do recall one intrepid tech writer who was 
happy to style heading 4 as bold italic, heading 5 as bold italic 
underscore, and so on.  I call it the Abyssal Stylesheet.

> It may require a lot of thought and
> ingenuity, but I guess a technical writer should have the ability to put
> across information within the four levels. One way of dealing with complex
> topics, which seemingly require more levels, is by making use of styles,
> boxes, notes, tables, fonts, colors, and other such features.

This probably works.  I guess the theory is that we must reassure the 
audience with soothingly organized information presentations to level 4, 
and beyond that we can do what we want except to portray it as 
increasingly deep structure.

TGIM!

Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com