For brief essays and reports, you may need no headings at all. For longer documents, however, these devices call attention to the organization of the text and thus aid comprehension. Some kinds of reports use set headings (such as Abstract and Summary), which readers expect and writers therefore must provide; see 53d for an example. When you use headings, you need to decide on type size and style, wording, and placement.

Type size and style

This book, which is a long and complex document, uses various levels of headings. These levels of headings are distinguished by type sizes and fonts as well as by color.

In a college paper, you will usually distinguish levels of headings using only type—for example, all capitals for the first-level headings, capitals and lowercase boldface for the second level, capitals and lowercase italics for the third level, and so on.

FIRST-LEVEL HEADING

Second-Level Heading

Third-Level Heading

Consistent headings

Look for the most succinct and informative way to word headings. In general, state a topic in a single word, usually a noun (Toxicity); in a phrase, usually a noun phrase (Levels of Toxicity) or a gerund phrase (Measuring Toxicity); in a question that will be answered in the text (How Can Toxicity Be Measured?); or in an imperative that tells readers what steps to take (Measure the Toxicity). Whichever structure you choose, make sure you use it consistently for all headings of the same level.

Positioning

Be sure to position each level of heading consistently throughout the text. And remember not to put a heading at the very bottom of a page, since readers would have to turn to the next page to find the text that the heading is announcing.