Help:Section headings

File:Table of Contents.png

Screenshot of an article's Table of Contents

A page can and should be divided into sections heading, also referred to in Visual editor as just Headings. For each page with more than three section headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated.

Section headings allow you to:

• directly link to that section of the article, both the full URL or when creating an Internal link
• allows Table of Contents to be automatically created and updated, aiding usability of the page, once there are at least 4 sections
• improve the Accessibility of articles for those with disabilities as Screen readers will allow an individual to jump to a portion of the page if a section is defined
• directly edit only that section of the article when using Enhanced editor; Visual editor only focuses on the section, but the entire page is editable
• also allows content to be shown on other articles using Labeled Section Transclusion

Section titles should follow the same capitalization naming convention as article titles. They should use sentence case, capitalize the first word of the title and words that are normally capitalized.

Creation and numbering of sections

Creating section headings with VisualEditor

The information below is from Help:Visual editor#Headings.

File:VisualEditor Toolbar Headings-en.png

Section headings
Heading / Level 2 Sub-heading 1 / Level 3 Sub-heading 2 / Level 4 Sub-heading 3 / Level 5 Sub-heading 4 / Level 6

The Headings pull-down menu: allows you to change how the paragraph is formatted. To change the style of a paragraph, put your cursor in the paragraph and select an item in this menu (you don't have to highlight any text). Section titles are formatted "Heading", and subsections are "Heading 2", "Heading 3", and so on. The normal format for text is "Paragraph".

• Paragraph (CTRL + 0) - a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea
• Heading (CTRL + 2) - You should always start adding sections with level 2 sections (Headings)
• Sub-heading 1 (CTRL + 3) - the 1st section level (sub-section), under Headings
• Sub-heading 2 (CTRL + 4) - the 2nd section level (sub-section), under Sub-heading 1
• Sub-heading 3 (CTRL + 5) - the 3rd section level (sub-section), under Sub-heading 2
• Sub-heading 4 (CTRL + 6) - the 2nd section level (sub-section), under Sub-heading 3
• Preformatted (CTRL + 7) - See Enhanced editor version at Help:Formatting#Preformattedtext
• Block quote (CTRL + 9) - See Enhanced editor version at Help:Formatting#Blockquotes
• Page title (CTRL + 1) - Level 1 should not be used for Accessibility reasons

Creating section headings with Enhanced editor

Sections can be created using the Editing toolbar or manually using the wiki text listed below. We ask that you only create section headings two (== Section ==) through five (===== Heading text =====).

== Section ==
=== Subsection ===
==== Sub-subsection ====

Please do not use only one equals sign on a side =Heading=. This would cause a section heading to be as large as the page's name (title). The maximum number of equals signs is six.

Heading names of sections (including subsections) should be unique on a page. Using the same heading more than once on a page causes problems:

• An internal link to a section, in the form [[Article name#Section heading]], will only link to the first section on the page with that name, which may not be the intended target of the link. See also Linking to sections of articles.
• When a section with a duplicate name is edited, the edit history and summary will be ambiguous as to which section was edited.
• When saving the page after a section edit, the editor's browser may navigate to the wrong section.

Section editing

Sections can be separately edited by clicking special edit links labeled "[edit]" by the heading. Subsections are included in the part of the section that is edited.

Section linking

You can directly link to section headings of a page. These section anchors are automatically used by MediaWiki when it generates a table of contents for the page, and therefore when a section heading in the Table of Contents is clicked, it will jump to the section.

The section anchors can be manually linked directly to one section within a page.

VisualEditor

The easiest way to add a section link to a USApedia page, using VisualEditor, is to:

• Go to the intended destination page of the section link
• Click on the intended destination section in the Table of contents
• Copy the URL from the broswer
• Go to the USApedia page in which you want to add the link
• Open the link tool and paste in the URL
• VisualEditor will format the link into a section link
• Click on the "Done" button
• Adjust the link label as needed
• Save the page

Enhanced editor

A link to this section (Section linking) looks like this:

[[Help:Section#Section linking|Section linking]]

To link to a section in the same page you can use [[#section name|displayed text]], and to link to a section in another page [[page name#section name|displayed text]].

Accessibility

Main page: USApedia:Accessibility

A standardized structure of articles improves accessibility, including section headings, because it enables users to expect contents to be in a specific part of the page. Section headings allow a visually impaired reader to jump the contents of the page that most interests him or her, rather than having their Screen reader dictate the entire contents of the page. For example, if a blind user is searching for disambiguation links and doesn't find any at the top of the page, he/she will know that there aren't any and they doesn't have to read the whole page to find that out.

Examples

Enhanced editor

Use headings to split articles into sections. Put a heading on a separate line. A level-two heading ("==") is the highest level editors use in an article.

What you type	What it looks like
==Section headings== ''Headings'' organize your writing into sections. The wiki software can automatically generate a [[Help:Table of contents|table of contents]] from them. Start with 2 'equals' ("==") characters.	Section headings Headings organize your writing into sections. The wiki software can automatically generate a table of contents from them. Start with 2 'equals' ("==") characters.
===Subsection=== Using more 'equals' characters creates a subsection.	Subsection Using more 'equals' characters creates a subsection.
====A smaller subsection==== Don't skip levels, like from two ("==") to four ("====") 'equals' characters.	A smaller subsection Don't skip levels, like from two ("==") to four ("====") 'equals' characters.
;A defined term: A semicolon at the start of a line is a way of making a definition where the word being defined appears in bold. The definition itself follows the colon and is not rendered bold by default. The defined term is not a heading and does not appear in the table of contents.	A defined term A semicolon at the start of a line is a way of making a definition where the word being defined appears in bold. The definition itself follows the colon and is not rendered bold by default. The defined term is not a heading and does not appear in the table of contents.

VisualEditor

See Creating section headings with VisualEditor above.

Lead section

File:Lead section.jpg

The lead section (also known as the lead, introduction, summary or intro) of a USApedia article is the section before the table of contents and the first heading. The lead is the first part of the article most people read, and many people only read the lead. Consideration should be given to creating interest in reading more of the article, but the lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at content that follows. Instead, to invite reading more the lead should be written in a clear, accessible style. It should contain no more than four paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate.

The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important aspects. The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points—including any prominent controversies. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources, and the notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article.

Read more on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section.

Wikipedia recommends the order of elements, listed below,in the lead section.

• disambiguation links (dablinks)
• maintenance tags
• Breadcrumb
• infoboxes
• images
• introductory text
• table of contents moving to the heading of the first section.

Related

• Help:Visual editor#Headings

External links

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Section