And it’s a lot easier on the eyes than large, uninterrupted blocks of text – especially when reading on a screen. Subheadings break up articles into different sections, which allows for easier scanning of the sections of an article. It’s obvious which looks better, right? Why Else are Subheadings Important? The same text with and without subheadings. Which, in turn, can help convince potential readers to keep reading…įor instance, what looks better to you in the example below: They can also break down a longer piece of writing into different parts or sections, serving almost the same role in an article that a chapter does in a book. Subheadings help break up large blocks of text. Put another way, it’s the bold, stand-out text just above the preceding paragraph that says “What is a subheading anyway?” It’s this latter definition that we’re focusing on. “an additional headline or title that comes immediately after the main headline or title,” as well as a “title given to one of the parts or divisions of a piece of writing.” Everything from eye-catching headlines, to smaller-than-usual paragraphs, to bulleted or numbered lists plays a part in making an article, story, column post – any piece of content that’s predominantly text – more appealing to people.Īnd headings – more accurately, subheadings – are a big part of that.Īccording to the dictionary definition (thanks, Merriam-Webster), a subheading is: That’s why formatting for the web is so important. They scan – or skim, glance, browse, graze…whatever you want to call it, it’s not the same as pure reading. So what do people do online if they’re not reading? I asked him Ed to write a post detailing why we did this change, and he kindly obliged.Įspecially online (or, more accurately, on-screen, when you consider ubiquitous the use of smart phones and mobile tablets have become), where such factors as screen size, resolution, visual cues as to page length, and eye strain play a part in our ability to focus deeply on the written word. All of our blog content will now include this. One change we just implemented was teaching all our writers how to use Word’s Style menu to auto-format H2s and H3s. Note from Julia: Ed, our Senior Editor, assisted me in rewriting our 15+ page Web Writing Guidelines for our team of 60 writers this week.
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