Use of Headings and styles in Microsoft Word
Writing a document without format and structure it is like
cooking food without salt or drinking tea without sugar. They both are possible
but they are not what we should expect.
As we have said about Microsoft Office in recent posts, it is a great tool that is worth to be used (It has millions of users worldwide). Microsoft Office has millions of functions and thousands of tools that can take decades to cover them.
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Headings are very important for documents like books - Photo by Kord Blog |
Use of Headings and styles in Microsoft Word
That’s why we are here, we will cover them slow by slow
because it’s a must to known a feature in details to better understand how you
should us it and when to use it.
Understanding Microsoft Office and its applications is very simple, follow this simple rule; do it frequently and be eager to know each and every day.
I am not very at Microsoft Office but I believe that I have sufficient
skills that can help me to use it in my daily operation and that’s what I do,
it is my pivot tool that helps me to schedule my stuffs and do my work easily
and conveniently.
Today, we are going to cover an important tool for writers,
publishers, academicians and even marketers could use (it depends where). The
tool is “Headings”
What are Headings in Microsoft Word?
Headings are styles titles that indicates a chapter or a section in a document. Headings go above texts they represent, most of the time headings should look different to the paragraphs to be easily recognized by a reader.
Headings are represented in a minified way as an “H (Hs in plural”)
alphabet. If you see me write H1 or H2 and so on in below sections know that I
am saying headings and their respective levels.
Structure of Headings in Microsoft Word
In Microsoft Word, headings are located in the top right corner in the styles ribbon between editing ribbon and paragraph ribbon (sometimes basic texts ribbon). Headings are different in terms of levels and is in six levels and other additional special formats styles and not headers but I decided to include them in this topic because there is a relation between them.
If you
know basics of html you will recognize what I am saying easily because this is
somehow identical. Those headings are:
Heading 1
Heading 1 is like a title and can be used as main title in
articles, research articles and blogs while in books and academic documents
they can be used to represent chapters. Simply this heading starts any document
(if writing
Other headings (H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6)
As headings do represent titles and chapters in articles and
books, these other headings support H1 and they might be used as sub-titles (in
articles and blogs) or sub-chapters (books and formal documents). These
headings are crucial because they create a cascade in script.
Special formats headings
Apart from normal headings (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6),
Microsoft Word consists other special forms of headings which are:
HTML Preformat
The word HTML explains the format itself. Have you ever used
a programming software like Visual Studio Code? The use special codes that are
not similar to other editing fonts. This format can be used in case you have a
text or a document that have a part of explain codes or something related to
programming.
“<p> this
paragraph is in code format and I want to indicate that it is a special text </p>”.
This
text is in a special font and format that’s why it will be easily recognized by
one who is reading the document.
Emphasis
Emphasis is a style that you can use if you want to catch an
attention of reader or can be easily remembered. Emphasis uses Italic text
format
Strong
Strong is in normal term a bold, this style highlights a
part in paragraph like you see this paragraph
is instantly visible if you look in this text and can be easy for you to
recognize the what a writer is focusing on with this style.
Functions of Headings in Microsoft Word
In text writing there are crucial elements that writers
should do to impress readers or reviewers, one of them is the structure of the
text. You know what all readers do before reading a book or an article, its appearance
and this is mostly assessed through the way texts are formatted and how the
document is arranged.
If you format your book or article the way people feel they
are comfortable with your format, you hit the jackpot and you are on top but if
you do not.
Content
Imagine if you take some bucks (like $20), you order a book
and when it is delivered to you realize that it hasn’t table of content it is
just to start reading? Think about it and tell me what could be your immediate
reaction. For me, the answer is straightforward I would return it and claim my
money back.
That’s why Hs are crucial, you can use them – they will help
you to create table of content for your document. When you use them, it helps
you very much because you will not need to write down the table of content
instead it will be generated along the way.
For me, I use Hs often in any document above two pages
because it facilitates me to find the document using headings – if you don’t
know how you find document using find consider our post about find tool in Microsoft office
and how other shortcuts work to boost your workflow.
See also:
Readable structure
When you use headings, it creates a well-organized structure
in the document. If you look at the image below you see that the content is ranked
from large header to lowest (example H1 to H3). With this structure, a reader
won’t get bored of reading your text because he knows where he/she has started
and where he/she is going.
To draw attention
Looking at all styles we used above with every detail we mentioned
about them, it makes them special and different to normal text, the purpose
behind is to draw an attention to the one who reads.
If you use let’s say emphasis, quote or a heading this
totally is going to make the reader identify that title or part of the text
immediately. If it’s a message you want that reader to grab, then you have it.
How some people misuse headings and styles
When I was in my tertiary studies, I have seen my colleagues
were doing a mistake while writing internship reports and memoir but they didn’t
realise that. You guess what the mistake was? They were using strong (Bold) to
indicate the titles of chapters and subchapters.
That’s not a mistake but a mistake was to use this style
without applying headings because they finally struggle to create table of
content and again, they finally become obliged to create them or hire
freelancers to create for them.
Headings need to be used appropriately, the other way some people
misuse headings is when they make a bad arrangement of the headings. An
example, you can write a document and instead of marking header or title with
H1 but you mark it with H2, and its subchapter comes H1. That destroys the
structure of your text document because it is advisable to use heading by their
level.
Recap
Headings are styles of titles that indicates or a section in
a document, mainly formal documents like books, journals and documents but it
is not prohibited to use them into informal ones (in my opinion, it is instead advisable).
Headings are into different levels like in HTML; from H1 to H6.
Apart from headings, there are other styles like preformat (code font that’s how
I call it), Emphasis (Italic) and
Strong (Bold) which makes this part all
of them can be used to spice up your document in Microsoft word. These styles play
a vital role if you are writer or you want to be one and your writing tool is Microsoft
Word be ready and learn more about their functions to avoid any misuse of them.
Final thoughts
Look, what you write make people who read it classify you in
a certain category. You do it professionally, you increase your credibility and
people can see something special in you. You don’t need to write a book or a
document that will not attract the interests of the readers because they don’t
have any standard or they have no schema.
If you use headings in a book, people are going to be
interested it might not the whole but they can have interest of a single point
in the middle of the book. This is not the same as disliking a book at the very
first time.
Make use of headings a habit, it is not time consuming – you
are killing two birds with one stone
Do you find something new in this article? Share also your
experience on the use of headings we would like to hear from you.
3 Comments
Good article
ReplyDeleteThank you very much Takiman
DeleteAs a blogger, header texts are so essential for SEO. Especially if you want Google bots to understand your post's layout.
ReplyDelete