4.3 Using Headings

Headings and subheadings help to organize longer documents. Because the text is larger and often bold, the reader’s attention is drawn to them. Headings and subheadings are especially useful when you’re writing a document like a report, which often has different audiences looking for different types of information.

To write effective headings:

• Use parallelism: When you start a pattern, you should keep using it. For example, if you started with the heading “Email Conference Attendees” and then used “Print Conference Brochures,” you would disrupt the pattern if your next heading was “Contacting Catering Service.”
• Use consistent sizes and fonts: In your document, you might have different “levels” of headings. Apply the same font and size to each “level” of headings in your document.
• Use limited articles: An article is a word like “the” or “a.” Too many of these can crowd your headings. For example, instead of saying “The Academic Barriers to Student Success,” you could say “Academic Barriers to Student Success.”

Find some examples in Activity 4.1 demonstrating good use of parallelism, headings and articles.

^{Activity 4.1 | Using Parallelism, Headings and Articles}