NOTE: This information in general, excluding instructions for specific editors, applies to all university public documentation.
Accessible headings
Use headings in an article or service description to organize the information into sections for clarity, readability, and accessibility.
- Use the Heading function (dropdown menu) in the editor to create actual HTML headings. Don't use larger font sizes or bold for headings. Using the Heading function in the editor places the heading tags in the source code to be read by assistive technology software and devices.
- The Article Subject field is the Heading 1 for the article, so the highest level used within the article should be Heading 2 with headings beneath those as Heading 3, and so on. Heading 1 should not be used in articles or service descriptions.
- Use headings in descending order, and don't skip levels.
- Put the most important information at the beginning of each heading so that it's visible if the title is truncated.
- Include keywords without being too wordy.
Descriptive headings are important for ADA accessibility as they help to find specific content and become oriented in the page.
Assistive technology such as a screen reader will read the heading tags in the source code and provide a list to the user; 88% of people surveyed said they found properly nested headings to be useful.
For full ADA compliance (Level AAA), headings must describe the topic or purpose, and section headings must be used to organize the content of the page.
To ensure web accessibility, see W3C's pages on:
Paste headings from Microsoft Word
If you use the correct heading in the draft in Word, it can be pasted into the article as the correct level heading.
Heading 1 = Heading in Word (do not use Heading 1/Heading in Word)
Heading 2 = Heading 2 in Word
Heading 3 = Heading 3 in Word
Use the Paste from Word button, and use either Ctrl/v or right-click, Paste.
Right-click, Paste as Plain Text will not paste formatting (including headings), but is handy when you are needing to paste only text.
If you have customized styles in Word, they may not copy over correctly.
Create a heading in a knowledge base article or service description
In the TDX editor:
- Click into the heading text to place the cursor.
- Click the Paragraph Format dropdown (default displays "Normal").
- Select the heading level.
Article Subject weight in searches
Some parts of a knowledge base article are weighted more heavily for search, which means the search engine considers content in those sections more important and gives it greater influence when determining the relevance and ranking of results. Matches found in weighted sections are more likely to rank higher and be returned to users.
The Title/Subject, the main heading (Heading 1) in the article, is weighted at 10.
The article Title (Subject field) is the main heading for the article so it is styled as a Heading 1. (This is why headings in the article should always start with Heading 2.) Titles should have words that will help the article show up in search results.
See Search Optimization for Knowledge Base Articles for more information about weighted fields.
Headings style guide
Microsoft Writing Style Guide: Headings