The text of a heading should accurately reflect the content that comes under it. Group like information together to create the main sections or chapters of a publication, and use subheadings to nest subsidiary information underneath these main headings.

Ensure that parallel topics are given the same level of attention within a publication, or explain why more detail is provided for one topic than another. This should lead to an even spread of chapters, main sections and subsections within a publication. Some might be somewhat longer or shorter than others, but there should be no major unexplained disparities (such as one chapter of 100 pages and one on an apparently parallel topic of only 5 pages). Similarly, if you use several levels of subheadings in one chapter, do not switch to using only level 1 and 2 headings in another chapter unless it is very clear why this change is necessary.

An easy way to check if the headings are arranged logically is to prepare a table of contents that contains all the levels of headings in the document (if you have used styles in your document, it is easy to do this in your word processing software by using the Insert Table of Contents function). This will quickly show you whether your headings are of parallel construction (eg all questions or all statements), accurately trace the ‘story’ you want to convey, and show whether sections and subsections are of a similar length and scope.