Tardis:Section headings

Typography and punctuation Tables → Use sentence case → Quotation marks → Italics → Capital letters → Bold text → Vertical spacing → Sentence spacing → Apostrophe → Comma → Period → Semi-colon → Movable type → Section headings

Longer articles should be divided into sections, each with their own heading. Headings are made in wikitext by using a series of = signs surrounding the heading name. Never create a section head simply by bolding the text.

Shortcut:

T:HEAD

Create section headings like this:

=== This is a heading ===

Immediately surrounding the text of your section header with spaces is extremely helpful to wiki maintenance. Thus:

=== Hello ===

is preferred over

===Hello===

Also the number of = signs used determines the level of the heading. You can use between two and six = signs. Never use just one = sign, as this is the "level" of the page title.

Here's how the different section heading levels look:

Headline 1

One = headline (under no circumstances should this ever be used in an article)

Headline 2

Two == headline

Headline 3

Three === headline

Headline 4

Four ==== headline

Headline 5

Five ===== headline

Headline 6

Six ====== headline

=Headline 7=

Seven ======= headline (doesn't exist)

Benefits of using proper headings

By using proper wiki coding for sections, we gain a number of benefits over "creating" false subheads through text bolding:

• If your article has a minimum of four section headings, a table of contents is automatically generated.
• Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set in "My preferences".
• Most properly created section headlines produce an "edit section" button, allowing for just that section to be edited.
• Words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches.
• Sub-sections of the article get progressively smaller headings. This visual consistency allows the reader to "know where they are" within the article just by the size of the font. It also allows the reader to know how the section they're reading relates to other sections.

Other matters

• Avoid links within headings.
• Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
• Section headings should be succinct
• Section headings should simply describe the contents of the section. Imaginative wording or puns aren't disallowed, but they might be edited to something less "creative" unless their meaning is very clear.