Introduction
Headings must be arranged in order from more important (Heading 1 and 2) to least important (Heading 3 to 6), and be nested in the correct way.
Always start with Heading 1 for the document title, this level should only be used once in the document. Then use Heading 2 as many times as needed for the main subject sections, and from then on each Heading level should be nested within the one above it.
- Heading 1 is for the main document title.
- Heading 2 is for the main sections.
- Heading 3 is for subsections under each Heading 2.
- Heading 4 is for sub-subsections under each Heading 3, and so on.
- Heading 5 and 6 follow the same rules, but should be used sparingly, as creating this many levels of subheadings makes content harder to follow.
Make sure the heading titles briefly describe the information the content is going to talk about. Vague headings make documents harder to understand.
Why it matters
The heading structure is used by assistive technology such as screen readers to identify the page sections for the listener. It is common for screen reader users to ask their technology to read out all the top level headings, or all the links in a document to quickly understand what information is being covered. This allows for much quicker navigation of the document, rather than the reader having to listen to the entire document they can skip straight to the area they need.
How to do it
In Word, headings are set using ‘Styles’. After highlighting the text that you want to use as a heading, select your desired style from the formatting toolbar or the ‘Styles Pane’.
To use headings in the right order, simply nest the next number whenever you want to add subheadings to a subject.
Heading 2 main subject area
Within the text for Heading 2 you might want a subheading, for this you would use a Heading 3.
Heading 3 subheading related to the H2 subject area
This is a subsection of the Heading 2 subject
Heading 4 subheading related to the H3 subject area
This is a subsection of the Heading 3 subject.
Please note: Word defaults this level of Heading to italics. It is important to turn the italics off, as this styling is not considered to be accessible.
Heading 2 for the next main subject area
You can see here in this example that the Headings levels have gone down to Heading 4 and then jumped back up to Heading 2. This is acceptable because we are now talking about a new subject. If we had made this a Heading 3 it would imply it was still part of the first Heading 2 above.