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Re: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?
Subject:Re: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable? From:John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Dori Green <dgreen -at- associatedbrands -dot- com>, techwr-l List <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:27:26 -0700 (PDT)
I think I have two problems with the belief that the size of the effort determines the number of heading levels:
1) It seems to imply lack of control, that the document can be taken anywhere the subject being written about wants to take it.
2) It is harder to enforce consistency. I like to try to base heading levels according to their purpose. H1 is always a Chapter start, H2 is always a description of the subject being documented. H3 are the procedural steps. Once you start going to H5 or H6, the structure becomes too random.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
"They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
So far, so good."
**************
Yes, yes, yes! Not too long ago I was asked to "document" (it's a noun,
guys) a great big, unbelievably complicated, database system. One day
of going through the sixteen boxes of information clearly showed that
what was really needed was three sets of documentation separated by
audience:
1 - day-to-day users who needed the down-and-dirty details
2 - supervisors of those day-to-day users so they could set realistic
performance measurements for their subordinates
3 - insanely busy upper-level managers who needed to know the most basic
facts only, but needed enough detail about the system so that they could
answer stockholders' questions with some intelligence
Each set of documentation was usable, and was actually used.
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