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HEADINGS
by Ginny Redish
1. In the FCC study of rules for radios on pleasure boats,
people were able to findinformation much faster in the version that
had questions as headings than in theversion that had nouns or noun
phrases as headings. That says that questions areeasier for people
than just nouns. It doesn't say that questions are always the
bestheading.
2. In a study that Veda Charrow and I did of headings in
warranties, we comparedtwo versions of several warranties. All were
written with clear sentences and easywords. For each warranty,
there was one version with no headings and one versionwith six
headings:
Who is covered? What is covered? What is not covered?
What(Company) will do and for how long What you must do How to get
warranty service (Today, I would in fact redo these as all
questions for the sake of
parallelismsee #6.)
People read one or the other version of each warranty and then
answered 12questions using the warranty. We found that people were
able to find the right
answer even in the warranties with no headings
but they didn't like those. 90% ofthe 48 people who participated
in the test chose the warranties with the headingsas "easiest to
read and understand" and as the one that they would be "more
motivated to use and pay attention to."
That study says that even in a very short document like a
half-page warranty,people find headings useful. Note that some of
these headings are questions, someare phrases but they are not just
nouns, they have personal pronouns and verbsin them.
3. Questions are better as headings than are nouns or noun
phrases. People cometo documents with questions so raising the
question creates that link that helps
users say "yes, this is where I want to be; this is what I need
to read." Often,writers don't get the noun headings in a logical
order. Thinking of questions asheadings helps writers put the
information into a logical order. Noun headings arealso often
misleading: Would a heading like "Eligible Loan Participants" refer
to
borrowers or to banks? "Who is eligible to apply" is much
clearer.
4. My conclusion from all my research is that headings need to
make connections tothe user. Single nouns or noun phrases that have
no people and no verbs in them
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/headings.cfm#6http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/headings.cfm#6http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/headings.cfm#6
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do not do well as headings. However, this does not mean that
questions are alwaysthe best type of heading. Other types of
headings that work well are
verb phrases like Filling out the Application
sentences like You Must Get a Permit to Operate a Center
and even phrases that have pronouns and verbs What You Must Do
First
All of these help users connect to the text and cue the user
better than nouns do.In a user's manual, people are trying to do
tasksactions. Actions are verbs. Verbphrases are the best headings
for sections that relate to procedures. Ssometimesverb phrases
would make good headings for procedural sections of rules.
5. Writing a good verb heading
One point that comes from a study my group did is that verb
phrases should startwith the action verb and not with "how to." The
problem is that if you have a seriesof steps and you start each
heading with "how to," you get something like this:
How to get a permit How to fill out the permit How to change
your address
In our study, we found that when the headings all started with
"how to," userscould not easily find the right section because
their eyes stayed on the "how to"and all the headings seemed the
same. When the headings were
Getting a permit Filling out the permit Changing your
address
users could see the different actions right away.
6. One issue that writers need to consider is that we also want
to strive forparallelism in the way we write the headings in a
particular section of the rules at aparticular level of heading. It
takes more mental energy to switch back and forth inunderstanding
when the structure of the headings keeps changing. If the
structure
changes with the level that's okay because it in fact helps
users understand thedocumentthe change from one structure to
another signals a change from toplevel to subtopic. So, one of the
reasons to use questions in regulations isparallelism. Once we
start with a question, it is easier for users if we keep goingwith
questions, like this:
Do I need a permit? How do I get a permit?
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What information do I need to put on the permit? What if my
address changes?
If we mix questions and verb phrases, it seems more confusing,
as in this example:
Do I need a permit? Getting a permit Filling out the permit What
if my address changes?
So, I like to suggest that we find the best structure for
headings for a particularlevel of heading in each major part of a
regulation. One possible structure, forexample, would be questions
at the top level, but then verb phrases for the sub-topics, like
this:
Do I need a permit? How do I get a permit?
Applying for a permit Filling out the application form Signing
the application form Sending in the application form
What do I do if I change my address? Are permits renewable?
Arranging for a renewalOne consideration in writing questions is
being concise. I originally wrote
What do I need to do to get a permit?Then I looked at that and
said "too long," so I rewrote it as
How do I get a permit?
