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Re: Is indenting subheadings and subtext current practice? Is it useful?
Subject:Re: Is indenting subheadings and subtext current practice? Is it useful? From:"Jane Bergen" <jbergen1 -at- earthlink -dot- net> To:"Jennifer Laiks" <jlaiks -at- prioritycall -dot- com>, "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:58:20 -0600
I'm not sure what you mean by "indenting headings" -- sounds like
you're talking about this:
Heading One
TEXT
Heading Two
TEXT
etc.
I think the "standard" (as if one really existed) is that the text is
one indention, usually with a wide left margin, and the headings
project leftward into that wide margin ( called "left-hanging
headings"):
Heading One
Heading Two
Heading Three
Heading Four
TEXT
(Hard to tell how the alignment in this email message is going to end
up on everyone's monitor screen)Going beyone four heading levels is
overdoing it for your reader in most cases. The beauty of the above
arrangement is that reader can quickly skim the left-hand headings to
find information. It may not be fancy but it works for the reader.
Jane Bergen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jennifer Laiks" <jlaiks -at- prioritycall -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 12:24 PM
Subject: Is indenting subheadings and subtext current practice? Is it
useful?
>
> Currently, our larger user manuals have five levels of headers, and
along
> with them five levels of text, bullets, and lists. Each sub-level
is
> indented more than the level above it. Of course, indentation at
five
> levels forces us to use a great number of paragraph types (in
FrameMaker).
>
> We were wondering if most people indent different levels of text?
Is it
> more current to just use different sizes of headers? Has anyone
seen
> articles/statistics on what degree of indentation makes text clearer
for
> readers?
>
