Use headings to highlight your message

- I have to be honest with you. Your readers don't want to read your entire document, they really don't. And you know what? I'll bet that doesn't come as a complete surprise. Your readers are just like you and me. They want to scan documents to find the information they're looking for. When readers scan, they choose how much or little to read and in what order. So to be a great plain language writer you've got to provide scanable features. One way to do that is with headings. You probably know what a heading is, but for learning's sake, a heading is the title for a section of a document, email, or webpage. Most writers bold the heading so they'll stand out. I'm going to show you two versions of a short proposal, one without headings and one with them. Here's version A. One quick glance and you can see how the lack of headings gives readers an all or nothing choice. Read all the paragraphs to find what they need or read nothing. Version A requires a lot of effort. Here's version B, with headings, much clearer. Readers can scan this version and jump easily to the section they want to read. Headings also provide readers with a high-level outline of the document. When your reader can see the structure of your document at a glance, they're more likely to understand the points you're trying to make. Let me show you three types of headings. Topic headings are the shortest type of heading. They're just a word or phrase and don't provide much information. Statement headings are longer. They're a clause or a sentence. Statement headings can provide a full idea. And then question headings. Question headings are a great way to show you understand your readers' questions about your topic. Let's imagine you're writing a tip sheet for parents on bicycle safety for their kids. The tip sheet includes one paragraph on getting the child's helmet to fit properly and another on how to choose the right size bike. Topic headings for these two paragraphs might look like this. As you can see, they provide some information but not much. They make it clear what the topic of the paragraphs will be but they don't tell you anything about the message of the paragraph. If we change them to statement headings, there's a lot more information. If your reader's scanning, you'll provide more support if you write statement headings. And question headings give the document a conversational style, especially if you use your reader's actual questions for the headings. Some people hold an outdated, anti-heading attitude about writing. They believe that important documents or content should look important. Well, it's time to get over that. Plain language writers aren't over-simplifying their topic. They're helping their readers find the information they need.