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This guideline is a part of the English Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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Headings are used to divide an article into sections. This helps writers to structure their text better and makes it easier for readers to understand the article.

Wording

• In general, heading titles should be nouns or noun phrases ("Effects of the wild", not "About the effects of the wild"). See also is an exception to this rule.
• Definite and indefinite articles ("The", "A" and "An") should be omitted from the beginning of headings ("Mammals", 'not "The Mammals").
• Avoid restating the subject or article title, or of an enclosing section in headings ("Early life", not "His early life"). The reader assumes the overall subject, which should not appear repeatedly in titles.

Capitalization

Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case. Thus "Rules and regulations", not "Rules and Regulations".

Linking

Avoid links within headings. Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence under the heading.

Special characters

Avoid using special characters in headings, such as an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces (). In place of the ampersand, use the word "and" unless the ampersand is part of a formal name.

Repetition of section titles

Avoid repeating section titles. However, if this is necessary, the automatically generated Table of Contents will only be able to differentiate between the repeated titles if they have the same capitalization. Manual links to sections with repeated titles (regardless of capitalization) will always go to the first occurrence.

Standard appendices

Some heading titles have standard wording, and for these, the wording or capitalization must not be changed. Two equally acceptable sequences exist, as shown below, and the choice of one over the other depends on the system of references and notes being used in the article.

• See also
• Notes
• References
• Further reading
• External links

or

• See also
• References
• Notes
• Further reading
• External links

There is usually no need to maintain both a Notes and References section, but it can be helpful. See WP:CITE.

Markup

Use the == (two equal signs) style markup for headings, not the ''' (triple apostrophes) used to make words appear bold in character formatting.

Start with "==", add the heading title, then end with "==".

The reasons for this are:

• Sections can be linked to both internally and externally.
• Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set.
• A table of contents can be automatically generated from the sections.
• Sections can be edited individually.
• Words within properly marked headers are given greater weight in searches.
• Visually impaired users may be using software which begins by giving a summary of the article, built from the heading tags.

Nesting

Nest headings correctly, for the same reasons as above. The hierarchy is as follows:

• the automatically-generated top-level heading of any page is a H1, which gives the article title;
• primary headings within the text of the article itself must therefore be H2, ie "==";
• below that, the sub-heading of "==" is "===";
• the sub-sub-heading below that is "===="… and so on.

Example:

==Heading 1== 
===Heading 1.1=== 
====Heading 1.1.1==== 
==Heading 2==

Bold and italic text

Use of bold and italic text for emphasis within a heading is discouraged. However, italics may be used to typeset a title within a header when appropriate (see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (titles)).

Spaces

Spaces above and below headings are completely optional. Spaces between the == and the heading text are also optional (==Heading== vs == Heading ==). With the current MediaWiki software, these extra spaces will not affect the appearance of the heading in any way; the rendered page is identical. Multiple blank lines will add white space, however.

It is much like the issue of whether to use one or two spaces after a full stop. It only affects the appearance of the text in the edit box, so use whichever approach best facilitates editing for you, but don't add or remove these spaces just as an edit style preference as it can cause large differences to appear in the edit history.

Note that the Start a new discussion tab on a Talk: page (the "+" link) inserts a blank line before and after the heading, and spaces in between the == and the heading text. Some editors find this easier to read in the wikitext source code.

Tables of contents (overview)

For each article with more than three headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated from the section headings, unless:

• (for a user) preferences are set to turn it off
• (for an article) in the edit box the code __NOTOC__ is added

The TOC is put before the first section header unless it is placed manually with the code __TOC__. Thus there may be some introductory text before it, known as the "lead". See Misplaced Pages:Guide to writing better articles#Lead section for recommendations on the length of the lead section.

When the __TOC__ code is used, the TOC is available for articles with fewer than four headings.

For more on tables of contents see Help:Section#Table of contents (TOC).

Floating the TOC

The TOC can, when an editor chooses, be floated either right or left using {{TOCright}} or {{TOCleft}}. It is not always a good idea to do this. For more on floating the TOC, including guidelines on when it is advisable, see Help:Section#Floating the TOC.

See also

• Help:Section explains sections and table of contents which are generated with creation of headings.

• Misplaced Pages style guidelines