Good document design pulls readers in and keeps them reading. Your headings and subheadings are a key part of good document design. Ensure your document is read rather than skimmed over by signposting key points in your headings and subheadings.
Readers use headings and subheadings to navigate content and find information. When you write context-rich, meaning-filled headings and subheadings, you signpost for readers your key points and capture their attention.
The research is in; everyone skim-reads.
All humans skim-read all the time. If there are informative headings and subheadings for our eyes to alight on as we skim read, we’re happy. Content-filled headings and subheadings mean we can get the gist of a document’s content before we have to make the effort of actually sitting down and reading the thing. On the other hand, if we’re faced with a wall of densely packed text running unbroken down a page, we’ll start to feel overwhelmed and put upon.
We skim-read because we want to know:
1. Where the writer plans to take us.
2. How much time we'll need to spend.
3. Whether the content requires us to respond or act?
We skim-read because we have prediction machine brains.
The work of Neuroscientist Anil Seth gets to the heart of why we skim-read. All of us have a strong need to know the context of what we're about to read before we start to read and it's our brain that drives this need. Our brain forms an understanding of what is happening out there in the world by making predictions based on prior experiences.
Before the work of Seth, and others who work in the field, the generally accepted view of how we perceived our reality was that our brain received information from our senses, which it then used to construct a picture of what was happening outside in the world.
Our minds predict our realities based on thousands of stored prior experiences.
Seth’s work reveals that the human mind is a “highly evolved prediction machine”. Our mind uses our previous experiences to make up a best guess at our reality. When the sensory information coming into the brain contradicts the chosen prediction, the brain will re-calibrate.
“… consciousness .. is a construction of the brain. I mean, it's easy to think that we open our eyes and objective reality is revealed to us through the windows of our eyes. And what conscious perception is - is basically just somebody sitting inside our skull, looking out there, and they see a red table, or they see a person, or they see a tree... But the truth is that all perceptions are acts of interpretation. They're acts of informed guesswork that the brain applies when it encounters sensory data…. there is no light in the skull, and there's no sounds. All that's going on in the brain are electrical impulses whizzing around in complex patterns. And out of all this - all this pattern-making in the brain, a world appears.” Anil Seth.
Content-rich headings and subheadings help readers make accurate predictions about your document’s content.
Seth’s work shows us why readers go to headings and subheadings first. They do so because headings and subheadings allow them to make predictions about a document’s content. These predictions then engage readers’ prior knowledge about your topic, which in turn helps the reader understand your content.
Effective business documents are structured so that readers don’t have to hunt for the information they seek.
Readers want documents that are easy to navigate; they want your information to be easy to find and easy to understand. Headings and subheadings act as powerful, informative signposts for your reader. Make sure you provide context and specific information in all your headings.
Vague and unhelpful | Informative and helpful |
Overview | Project planning – on track to meet deadlines |
Price projections | Initial tendered prices come in over budget |
Designer engagement | PlaySpaces engaged as playground designers |
Work progressions | Significant drainage works cause four-week delay
|
Keep your headings in a uniform font throughout your document.
Headings serve as a visible guide to the organisation and levels of information in your document. They give your content a hierarchy. Your choice of hierarchy shows the reader how you've organised your information and helps readers see the relationship between different levels of information. Increase and decrease your font size in keeping with the relative importance of the heading.
A typical hierarchy in your report could be:
Document Title
Section headings (first level)
Subsection headings (second level)
Paragraph headings (third level)
Content-filled headings increase reader understanding and engagement.
When you write content-rich headings and subheadings coupled with plain language, readers will view you as someone who is clear and knowledgeable. You’ll increase your credibility and persuasiveness because you have stripped away vagueness and made every word carry meaning, earning its place on your page. The result? Precise, accurate content and a logical progression of ideas. For more tips and advice check out my resources page. For business writing training and coaching either online or in-person, get in touch.