Headings should tell you where you are

Introduction. Background. Discussion. Conclusion.

Those headings identify four familiar activities. They say very little about the document beneath them. A reader returning to a proposal to find the reason for a delayed opening must inspect the sections one by one.

Now try: Why the opening date has moved. What the building work still needs. Two options for the autumn programme. The decision needed this week. Even without the paragraphs, the reader can see the document’s business.

A useful outline is partly a navigation aid and partly a test of thought. It gives you places to go. It also exposes whether you know why each part exists.

Name the section’s job

A heading does not always need to be clever or conclusive. Costs is perfectly good in a short proposal where someone will scan for costs. In a long report with several kinds of cost, What the temporary venue would cost does more useful work.

Think about the reader’s return visit. On the first reading, the paragraphs can lead them forward. On the third, they may want one fact: who needs to approve the move, whether the equipment can stay, or what happens if the contractor is late. Headings can preserve those routes.

This is close to the problem of giving files useful names. Both labels must work when the surrounding context has faded. A heading such as Other considerations is the document equivalent of a folder called Misc: sometimes necessary, rarely informative.

Let the levels express a relationship

In Markdown, heading levels describe structure. A second-level heading can introduce a main section; third-level headings can divide that section into smaller subjects. They should not simply mean “large text” and “slightly smaller text”.

For the delayed opening proposal, the hierarchy might be:

# Autumn opening proposal

## Why the opening date has moved
## Two options for the autumn programme
### Open a smaller programme on time
### Delay the full programme
## The decision needed this week

The two options belong together. Making them peers of the whole proposal’s other sections would obscure that relationship. Adding a fourth level for each cost item would probably overcomplicate a short document.

There is a cost to every heading: it asks the reader to stop and start a new unit of thought. A page containing six tiny sections may read more comfortably as three connected paragraphs. A personal note may need no heading beyond its title.

Read the outline as an editor

Once a draft exists, read its headings without the body. Look for a question raised but never answered, an unexpectedly large section, or two headings doing the same job. If Why delay? and Reasons for postponement contain overlapping material, the outline has found an editing task.

Then check whether the paragraphs keep the headings’ promises. A section called What the temporary venue would cost should not spend most of its space discussing attendance at last year’s programme. Either move the material or change the heading. Polished labels cannot repair a mismatched argument.

Clarity’s Outline follows a document’s headings, so the structure also becomes a way to move through the draft. You do not need to decorate every paragraph to make that navigation useful. For the opening proposal, four well-chosen destinations may be enough.