How to Write Headings Starts From the Question Form Settling the Range of the Answer

The same body of text gets read differently under two different headings.

A paragraph placed under the heading how long before a response comes back and the same paragraph placed under tips for keeping at it have different content picked out of them by the reader. The first gets read as a matter of time, the second as a matter of method. Not one character of the body has changed.

What has changed is the frame the reader received before reading the body. The frame arrives ahead of the body, so the body cannot cancel it afterwards.

Tips on how to write headings get shared as rules of display. Keep the hierarchy. Fit within thirty characters. Include a figure. Be concise. Include the term being searched. Every rule can be observed. And having observed them, what to write under that heading is still unsettled.

What settles the range is the form of the heading. Under tips for keeping at it, frequency, time of day, and tools all fit. Under what settles how long before a response comes back, only the answer to that question fits. In the first, where to stop never gets settled; in the second, it is over once the question is answered.

What gets answered is these three. First, how the fact that a heading operates as a frame changes the order in which headings get raised. Second, what choosing the question form settles about the section. Third, what constraint the rules on hierarchy and character count each belong to.

What does not get answered is how many characters and how many levels of hierarchy. Add a figure here and all you have is one more rule of display. Whether to include a figure is a separate question, and there is a criterion for it.

The fact that a range is unsettled does not get detected from the side of the rules. A heading within thirty characters, with an intact hierarchy and a search term included, satisfies every rule. Satisfying them, no occasion for repair arrives. Until the writer raises the question again themselves, that section stays filled with related content.

It is not visible from the reader’s side either. It merely passes as a section where it is hard to tell what the point is. That sensation of difficulty gets processed as a matter of writing style. Processed as such, the question of range disappears.

This is not an argument for removing the rules themselves. An article with a collapsed hierarchy reads badly, and a heading cut off mid-phrase changes meaning. What gets handled here is the one layer that survives satisfying every rule.

How the order of a whole article gets assembled sits on the side of the principles of article structure. What gets handled here is the level of a single heading.

Tips on How to Write Headings Have Settled Into Roughly One Form

Accounts of headings have settled, on the practical side, into more or less a single form.

A heading divides the body and indicates what each division handles. Readers do not necessarily read from the top, so the content needs to be available to somebody skimming — that is the account.

Rules get set out. Do not skip levels. Place a mid-level heading under a top-level one, and a sub-level under that. Make the article’s content available from the headings alone, laid out in sequence.

A rule of thumb on length appears too. Within thirty characters. A length that fits inside the displayed width. It gets cut off partway if it runs long — that reason gets appended.

Advice on content arrives as well. Include a figure and it becomes concrete. Include the term the reader searches on. Represent the article’s content accurately. Avoid vague expressions.

Things to avoid get listed too. Using headings for decoration. Placing headings that read only introduction or summary. Attaching a heading that does not correspond to the body.

All six items are on target. With a collapsed hierarchy the reader gets lost, and a form that makes the content available to a skimmer genuinely helps. The observation that an overlong heading gets cut off is simply a fact. This is not to say that rules of display are unnecessary. Reading by picking up the headings alone to grasp the whole cannot work unless the hierarchy is intact.

Underneath this whole set, one shared way of seeing has been laid down. A heading is organised as display, present in order to indicate the body clearly. The body comes first and the heading points at it. A problem of display.

Handle it purely as a matter of display and the direction in which a heading settles the content of the body drops out of view. Raise a heading first and start writing, and that heading is settling the range of the body.

So why not write the body and attach the heading afterwards. As a sequence that is possible. But nothing is left to stop the range widening as you write. With the heading coming after, you end up settling what was this section about once the writing is done, and a heading can be attached even where two subjects are inside.

That same premise settles the direction of improvement. It sends you towards raising the precision with which the rules of display get satisfied. The precision does rise. What the raised precision measures is appearance rather than range.

And something comes back on the side of the rules too. With only the rules of display shared, headings that satisfy the rules multiply. Within thirty characters, hierarchy intact, search term included. And what the section answers is still unsettled.

A Heading Places a Frame for Understanding Before Reading

A heading is not a summary of the body; it places, in advance, the frame for reading it. There is an experiment on the effect of the frame. In 1972, Bransford and Johnson had subjects read a passage describing a procedure (Bransford & Johnson, 1972, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 717–726). The passage was grammatically correct and its vocabulary was plain, but what the procedure was for had not been stated.

The group shown the title in advance scored higher on comprehension and on the amount recalled. For the group shown the same title afterwards, that difference did not appear.

This experiment measured the comprehension and recall of a passage; it did not directly measure the effect of headings in an article. What it indicated is the direction in which the same passage gets received differently depending on whether the frame comes first.

Two implications for practice. First, a heading sits before the body, so it settles how the body gets read. Second, even a heading attached afterwards arrives first as far as the reader is concerned.

A doubt arises that identical bodies must convey identical content. They do not. A reader does not receive the whole of the body equally; they pick out the parts fitting the frame. Change the frame and the parts picked out change. What the experiment indicates is that this difference appears in both comprehension and memory.

Where the frame is too strong, the content of the body gets read to fit it. Things not written in the body sometimes get read in, supplied by the frame. A heading the body does not support therefore becomes a cause of misreading.

The position of the frame carries a condition too. The difference appeared for the group shown the title in advance. For the group shown it afterwards, the same title produced no difference. A heading never sits behind the body, so this condition is satisfied automatically.

This structure carries an implication for order. Once you know it operates as a frame, settling the heading first becomes the natural form. Settled first, the body gets written inside that frame. A narrow frame reduces what can be written; a wide one leaves the range unsettled. The work of raising a heading becomes the work of settling content.

Settling it first has a price. What comes into view while writing falls outside the frame. What falls gets sent to another section, or the frame gets rebuilt. The judgement to rebuild the frame is available only where you know what the frame is doing.

The Form of a Question Settles the Range of the Answer

Write a heading in the form of a question and the range to be answered gets fixed.

A category name does not fix it. Under how to write headings, the hierarchy, the length, and search all fit. Being able to fit them in means how much to write before it suffices has not been settled.

That point itself is handled in the principles of article structure. What gets handled here is that there are several question forms, and each form demands a different type of answer.

A form asking what demands a definition. Under what is a heading, a definition goes in.

A form asking why demands a mechanism. Under why does a category name leave the ending unsettled, an account of the cause goes in.

A form asking where demands a procedure for adjudication. Under where can it be confirmed that a heading settles a range, methods of confirmation go in.

Choosing the form of the question is therefore choosing the type of the section. With the type settled, an estimate of what to write becomes available. An unsettled section runs long because the type is unsettled, so all the related content can go in.

Into a section left as a category name — the length of headings — rules of thumb, reasons, and exceptions all fit. Into what constraint does the rule of thumb on length belong to, only the answer to that question goes. The figure appears as part of the answer.

Making even the displayed heading a question reads poorly in some settings. The displayed form is free. The rule of thumb on length is a constraint of display, not of content works as a declarative too. What is required is that the writer has settled, on their own side, the one question that section answers.

Not every section becomes a question. There are sections handing over a definition first, and sections laying down a shared premise. These are not answering a question but building the state in which one can be raised.

The question form works on quantity as well. How many steps one question takes to answer is roughly visible the moment you raise it. A question needing one step does not require an independent heading. A question needing five or six has split into two. The number of headings gets settled as the outcome of that split.

This form has something inconvenient about it for a writer. Put things in question form and headings you cannot answer emerge — the question stands and the answer is not on your side. Left as a category name, that section can be filled with related information. Becoming unfillable is what this form does.

And the work of raising the question again is lighter than the work of rewriting the body. A question is one line, so rewriting it takes minutes. Notice the same problem after writing eight sections and the cost is eight sections.

Hierarchy Is Not Decoration but a Relation of Containment

The relation between a top-level and a mid-level heading is not a difference of size but a relation of containment.

What the mid-level heading handles sits inside the range the top-level heading handles. Not sitting inside, that mid-level heading belongs somewhere else.

Hierarchy is therefore usable for adjudication. Examine whether the mid-level heading you raised is contained in the range of the one above. Not contained, either the range above is too wide or that mid-level heading belongs to another section.

Choose the hierarchy from the side of display and this adjudication stops working. A heading raised for the reason I want visual variation, so I will insert a sub-heading holds no relation of containment.

How to write an article cannot be placed under how to write headings, because the former is wider. It may not look wrong as display; the relation has been inverted.

Conversely, where the relation of containment has been built correctly, the structure can be confirmed by looking at the hierarchy alone. Do the lower headings divide the range of the one above. Omissions or overlaps in the division mark a structural problem there.

Whether things need assembling that strictly is a fair doubt. Strictness is not itself the aim. What works is that a place where containment has collapsed indicates a problem of content. A mid-level heading that does not fit the range above is, in most cases, a place where the discussion strayed while you were writing.

Some articles have shallow hierarchies. Where one level suffices, there is no need to force a lower one into existence. Hierarchy gets raised only where division is required.

Nor is a deeper hierarchy better. Three or more levels make it harder for a reader to locate their present position. Where division is required, splitting the article often reads better.

There is a way to confirm the relation of containment. Examine whether the content of the mid-level heading can be restated in the words of the heading above. If it can, it is contained. If restating it becomes unnatural, the range departs there.

This method works while writing, too. Can the paragraph you are writing be restated in the words of the current heading. The place where it can no longer be restated is where the discussion strayed.

Assemble by containment and load appears elsewhere: the words of the heading tend to get longer, because you are trying to indicate the range accurately. That collides with the constraint on length, so something gets cut somewhere. What falls when cutting is, in most cases, the part that was limiting the range. The heading afterwards satisfies the conditions of display with only its range widened. And that it widened cannot be seen by looking at the heading.

The Rule of Thumb on Length Is a Constraint of Display, Not of Content

The thirty-character rule of thumb comes from the displayed width. The constraint of display is real. In search results and listings, anything past a certain length does not get displayed. In the setting where the reader sees that heading, they see it cut off.

The constraint of content comes from elsewhere. Can the question that section answers be indicated with neither excess nor deficiency. If indicating it takes thirty-five characters, thirty-five is what it takes.

Mix the two and the content side gets cut. Reservations get dropped to make it fit, conditions get dropped, and the result is a heading with a wide range. Widen the range and where the section ends stops being settled.

There is therefore an order. Write first in the form that indicates the range. Then shrink it to fit the constraint of display. While shrinking, keep hold of what you dropped.

Ingenuity in getting over it strengthens the wall fits the display. Once ingenuity in getting over it gets shared, the form becomes familiar and the next adjudication comes faster does not. If the latter indicates the range accurately, the former is an abbreviation, and the writer holds the section’s range in the latter.

If it displays cut off, surely it just has to be short. A line can be drawn here. In the display setting, you shorten it. Headings displayed inside the article do not get cut. The two are different places, so different decisions are available. The heading inside the article and the title appearing in a listing need not be the same string.

Nor is shortening always a loss. Being able to shorten means the range has been narrowed. The difference between a heading that shortens on cutting and one that cannot be cut is whether the range has narrowed to one.

The advice to include the term being searched sits inside this order too. Settle the range, then examine whether the search term works as a term expressing that range. Put the term in first and match the range afterwards, and the range gets pulled towards the term.

The order of cutting gets settled as well. What may be dropped is words that do not change the range: framing words such as regarding or the matter of, and duplicated modifiers. What must not be dropped is words that were limiting the range. Shrink what settles the number of headings to the number of headings and the question reverts to a category name.

A figure has a way of drawing adjudication towards itself. Within thirty characters, a good heading; over, a bad one. Memorise the rule of thumb as a figure and adjudication becomes this single line. And this line does not examine whether the range has been settled. Not examining it, a heading with a wide range survives as a heading that met the conditions.

Where the Range of a Word in a Heading Is Not Shared, the Section Gets Read Two Ways

Where the meaning of a word used in a heading differs between writer and reader, the whole frame diverges.

This mechanism was handled in the order in which explanation improves: the easier the word, the more each person holds a different meaning, so no operation of confirmation occurs. In headings, this problem covers an entire section.

The heading places the frame, so however accurately the body gets written, what the reader picks out is only the part fitting their own frame.

Suppose you place the word funnel in a heading. You mean the route from entrance to registration. If the reader holds it as a word denoting the arrangement of buttons on a page, that section gets read as a discussion of buttons. Discuss the route in the body and, from the reader’s position, it disappoints.

Words used in headings therefore carry a condition. Either the definition sits inside that section, or the word’s range is narrow enough to need none. A word that is neither gets removed from the heading, or gets a definition placed first.

Rewriting for removal is simple. Replace the word with the content it denotes. Turn funnel design into how to assemble the route from entrance to registration. It runs longer, and the range gets shared.

Surely a general word gets searched more. On the search side it is an advantage. Advantage and shared range are separate axes. The form that satisfies both places the word in the heading and specifies the range in the section’s first sentence. What is meant here by funnel is the route from entrance to registration.

Not every word needs a definition. Words whose range is fixed at more or less one thing — figures, particular procedures, everyday actions — can be used as they are. Definition is needed for words at a high level of abstraction, used across several levels.

There is one rule of thumb for telling them apart. Restate the word in other words and see whether several restatements hold at once. If they do, the range is not fixed.

Place a definition and a different problem appears where you placed it. The first paragraph under the heading becomes a definition, which competes with the form that leads with the conclusion. The way out is a form that contains the definition inside the conclusion. A route from entrance to registration may have several entrances so long as they converge into one. That sentence carries the specification of the range and the conclusion at once. Getting away without a definition-only paragraph is limited to cases where the conclusion contains the range. Where it does not, placing the definition paragraph first is safer.

What the Advice to Include a Figure Points At Is the Thing Counted

The advice include a figure in the heading and it becomes concrete has two readings. The first reading is indicating what was counted. The heading it divides into three indicates that the section handles three things. The reader knows that three readings finish it.

The second reading is the understanding that the figure itself draws. Seven methods. Done in five minutes. Here the figure has been placed as form rather than content.

What separates the two readings is whether the figure corresponds to the structure of the body. Corresponding, the figure is a specification of range. Not corresponding, it is decoration.

A figure placed as decoration has a mechanical problem. Settle the number first and the content gets adjusted to that number. To list seven, the sixth and seventh get thin.

Where it corresponds, it is simple. Write the reasons for not acting divide into three and the body divides into three. Write seven methods for improving your writing and whether the seven came out of the content or was settled before writing is unavailable.

Telling them apart is available to the writer. Did that number emerge as the outcome of organising the content. Settled first, it is decoration.

The observation that headings with figures get read more is on target. They do. The reason they do is that the end becomes visible. Written as seven, roughly how long it runs becomes available. This operation holds where the number corresponds to the content. Where it does not, a reader who finishes notices that the latter half of the seven is thin.

A number that came out of the content sometimes lands on a round figure. There, it can be written as it is. What becomes a problem is only the case of settling the number first and matching content to it. A number settled first demands the same seven whether three suffice or four are required. By the amount the demand gets met, the sections come out uneven in thickness.

Rhetorically converting a degree into a figure is a separate matter. Rewriting a great many as three times contains no basis for comparison. The handling of figures itself is treated in the principles of sales copy.

Put a number in a heading and it works on later operations. Adding a fourth to a section written as three means repairing the heading. Repairing being a nuisance, the fourth gets tucked into the body. Tucked in, it fails to match when a reader counts. A reader who notices the mismatch starts recounting the figures further on. A number operates as a specification of range only while the specification is being kept.

A Section Whose Words Will Not Come Is Split in Two on the Content Side

The causes of the state the words of the heading will not come divide mainly into two.

The first cause is that the section contains two subjects. Being two, they do not fit one heading. Try to fit them and you get a wide word covering both — a category name.

The second cause is that the question the section answers has not been settled. With nothing settled about what it answers, it cannot be written in question form. Unable to write it, you end up placing the name of the object handled.

For both, the symptom is no good heading comes to mind. They can be told apart by writing the section’s content in one sentence. If and or also enters, it is the first cause; if one sentence will not come, it is the second.

In neither case does the resolution sit on the side of the heading. It is either splitting the section or settling the question.

Suppose the hierarchy discussion and the length discussion sat inside one section. The only heading available for it is a wide word such as on the form of headings. Split it and each half gets a heading in question form.

The hope remains that a good turn of phrase would make it fit. Sometimes it does. When it does, that heading is indicating two subjects with one frame. The reader picks out only the part fitting the frame, so one half drops. Which half drops differs by reader.

Some sections do have two subjects side by side as the subject itself: sections showing a boundary. Here the heading answers the single question the two are different things. Telling them apart depends on whether the relation between the two can be written in one sentence. If it can, one section; if not, two.

There is also another cause. The content of the section is settled, but it has already been handled in another section. Here, trying to raise a heading produces words resembling those of the section that already handles it. The resemblance is the detection of the duplication.

There are two ways to handle resembling headings sitting side by side: fold the two sections into one, or reframe one as a question from a different angle. Only changing the phrasing so they do not appear to resemble each other preserves the duplication.

Handle it as a problem of content and the work stops there, because what follows is splitting the section or settling the question again. The work of searching for words moves your hands more, and by the amount they move, the unsettled state gets preserved. A preserved state survives to publication.

The habit of choosing work by whether your hands move has one further consequence. Searching for words has no visible upper bound. Splitting, or settling the question again, finishes in minutes either way. The allocation of time points the opposite way to the quality of the adjudication.

How to Tell Whether the Heading You Raised Holds a Range

A heading you raised can be tested three ways before you enter the body.

The first confirmation is to put the heading into question form.

A heading left as a category name catches here. Having made it a question, try answering in one line. If no answer comes, that section cannot be written yet. If two answers come, there are two sections.

The second confirmation is to see whether it is contained in the range of the heading above.

Not contained, that heading belongs somewhere else. Whether the mid-level headings lined up divide the range above with neither excess nor deficiency also becomes visible here. An overlap means two sections handle the same thing.

The third confirmation is to read the headings you raised in sequence and see whether the article’s content can be reconstructed.

If it can, the headings indicate ranges. If it cannot, the headings operate only as markers in the body. What a skimming reader receives is this sequence and nothing else.

None of the three examines length or the choice of words. Those are conditions of display, on a different axis from whether the range has been settled.

There is one adjudication not among the three: whether the reader actually holds that question. A heading in question form, with an intact hierarchy, asking a question the reader does not hold, is entirely possible. A section answering a question nobody holds goes unread however accurately it was assembled. That adjudication is available only at the stage before writing.

How many levels to build, how many characters in one heading, whether to include a figure. Add a rule of thumb here and it is one more rule of display. The two constraints separated up to this point — the side of display and the side of range — get mixed back into one by the rule of thumb.

The same body gets read differently under two headings. A reader picks out the parts fitting the frame of the heading, so a wide frame leaves the range picked out unsettled, and a section whose range is unsettled has no settled ending. Hierarchy, character count, and the choice of words all line up as constraints on that single point.

In front of a heading that will not come, the available moves narrow to two. Split the section in two, or settle again the question that section answers. Which of the two you take gets separated by writing the section’s content in one sentence. If the sentence needs and or also, the splitting side; if no sentence can be written, the question side.

How the order of a whole article gets assembled is treated in the principles of article structure, and the procedure for sharing the range of a word in the order in which explanation improves. How to write the opening few lines sits next door, in how to write a lead paragraph. Whether the question a section answers has been reset is knowable without waiting for the piece to be finished. Where to measure whether you are making progress sits in the design of verbalisation.