Re: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?

Subject: Re: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?
From: Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>
To: "Butler, Darren J Ctr 584 CBSS/GBHAC" <Darren -dot- Butler -dot- ctr -at- Robins -dot- af -dot- mil>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:24:16 -0700

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 -dot- com
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Follow-Ups:

References:
How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?: From: Van Laan, Krista
RE: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?: From: Butler, Darren J Ctr 584 CBSS/GBHAC

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