Improve the structure and readability of your web writing: the HEAD and SUBHEAD codes.

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Hi, I'm Carl from OSP and this is Communicate Connect Grow, the OSP podcast.
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On today's episode, we're talking about using subheadings in your writing, with the editing codes head and subhead.
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If you want to be a more effective writer, a more transparent editor, develop clear strategic thinking or learn from our network of expert friends and colleagues, that's what we're here for.
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We divide our episodes across three themes Communicate, connect and Grow.
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This is a Communicate episode and we're talking about breaking up copy with our editorial codes head and subhead.
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These editing codes fall into the flow and readability phase of the editing process and they're about chunking long form writing into blocks and using meaningful subheadings.
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In our documentation about this code, it says Relevant subheads assist the reader by breaking up copy and defining the purpose of each text block.
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G'day.
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I'm Felicity Brand.
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I'm a writer and editor at OSP, also known as a communications consultant.
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The code subhead and head break up copy into chunks and make the headings meaningful.
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So the subhead code is a structural aid.
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It's really meaningful for long form content.
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It's about separating content into chunks so that there is some structure to the written piece.
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Additionally, the subheadings have to be meaningful.
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So we have another editing code called head, which is about making sure that the words in the heading describe the chunk of content.
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And that's because readers skim and scan.
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Readers should be able to just read the headings and grasp the content covered in the page.
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The Nielsen Norman group have done a lot of research into how readers read on the internet.
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They skim and they scan.
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So on the average web page, people read about 20% of the words.
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That means that your subheadings they need to do some heavy lifting.
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The NN group also found that people don't read your content completely or linearly, so they're going to pick out information on the page that seems to meet their needs.
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So if you use clear headings to break up the content and label the sections, people can scan to find what they're interested in and then they might dive deeper and read the content chunk.
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Additionally, the use of headings as a structural aid.
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It's adding white space to your page.
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It's giving the readers eye a chance to rest and we're going to put links to that research in the show notes so that you can find out more.
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Hi again, I'm Jeffrey A McGuire.
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Feel free to call me Jam.
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I am the origin brain of these writing and editing codes and a partner at Open Strategy Partners where we try and apply them as a team of strategists and communicators to help our clients in the technology industry.
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So it's interesting somehow and I don't remember how it happened, but it's interesting that we have one code that says use headers and one code that says use subheaders, and I think we weren't paying strict attention when we came up with that.
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It sounds like they're the same.
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They're very subtly different and I sort of wonder over time if we're just going to merge them somehow, because already now we're merging the podcast episode for them.
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Essentially, as far as I can vaguely, vaguely recall, what happened is that they came about at different times and for different reasons.
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So in our current operating definition we say to use subheads to break up the copy and end, create more structural clarity within a piece.
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So a related code to this would be our code wall.
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It says use headers, paragraphs, block quotes, lists, because a wall of words will put a reader off.
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Basically, the mirror image of that code is break things up, and one of your tools there valuable tool is sub headers.
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Now, headers and sub headers are especially valuable, and if we flip over to the code that we call head right now, this says put headers in place and they should sum up, they should give sign posts to the reader, who's maybe scanning the article to get an overview of what the whole thing is about.
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So head is a readability hint and subhead is a structural hint Subtle.
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Maybe we need better names for them.
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I'm Christine Bueller and I work on writing and editing social media messages, case studies, landing pages for our clients at Open Strategy Partners.
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Head is about readability.
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You just want to be writing meaningful, informative headings that define the purpose of each block of text, and subhead is more structural.
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They just assist the reader in breaking up copy, also defining the purpose of each text block.
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Hi, I'm Chris Fenwick and I work as a copywriter and editor at RISP.
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I think they're the same codes, to be honest.
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They're just different perspectives on.
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They're different perspectives on the idea of breaking up the piece with sub headers, and one of those perspectives is structural and the other is to do with the readability and the effect that it has on the reader.
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I mean, I think these things are always like slightly related to each other, but structurally it helps when you're planning your piece to have subheadings in place, so then you know what each section is supposed to be about and what the kind of narrative thrust of that section is.
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Obviously, sometimes you can write stuff with subheadings in and then take them out and your piece still has some sort of structure and you've kind of taken away the scaffolding.
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But I think for readability reasons, for the kind of writing that we do, we want to keep them there and that kind of brings us to the second sense of the code, which is why it's helpful for readers, which is that it reduces the cognitive loads and what gives the reader an opportunity to pause and then also, because they have the subheading there, they can orientate themselves around it and they know what's coming.
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As an editor, head and subhead are pretty easy to check for.
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When you're first just scanning a piece, it's easy to see like if the piece has hit those.
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It's not just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
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Your eye can just go straight down or it should go straight down.
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Sometimes.
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You know if you see that a paragraph is getting too long, you're gonna look for ways to help break it up.
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Sometimes things are also more appropriate as bullet points or other formats.
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It just makes it easier to edit something.
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I don't think I have to really use these codes, because everybody at OSB always writes with subheadings in place.
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Let's explore how you use this code as an editor.
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As an editor, you can add value with the code subhead and head by making sure that there are content blocks, that the content blocks are chunked at the right place, that the ideas are grouped well together and their order flows nicely, that the size of the content blocks are in proportion.
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The subheadings should tell a story and accurately represent the content of the block.
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You don't wanna mislead the reader with a fancy heading that then doesn't represent what the text is about.
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You'll lose credibility, also as an editor, something to look out for.
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Headings are a good place for SEO keywords, but we need to make sure that the heading is always meaningful.
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We don't wanna lose sacrifice meaning for SEO.
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Yeah, for my editing style, I definitely do a pass early on, when I'm thinking, when I've read everything, when I've done our positivity pass, check back in the old episodes, for that I've marked what I like, what I think is good, and I'm really trying to check the flow and the readability of the piece.
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I want the story to come out of those headers and if I don't think that they're doing that, then it's gonna be on my mind.
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I want them to be compelling, I want them to be interesting and I want them to be non-generic if possible.
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I usually then go a little further and start to tighten up the article, do whatever it needs, and then, as that narrative is sitting, as I've, you know, checked everything else then, towards the end of the past, I'll start to try and make the headers a little more clever, but not too clever, like just, you know, tight and interesting and telling the story right.
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So that's definitely my application.
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On the other hand, I guess if I were thinking about the structural side of things, I might use wall or I might, you know, just go ahead and break things up into a list and or suggest that to the author, as we're going.
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So maybe I use the.
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Maybe I use the readability side of this more as an editor.
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Yeah, I mean subhead and head serve a lot of different purposes.
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They are informative.
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They are also the hook which is hopefully drawing the reader in.
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They also just sort of provide a way to quickly scan something and see if it's interesting or relevant to you as a writer, I think it just helps you organize your ideas more easily.
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Sometimes I'll even write subheads or headings before I even get into, like, the meat of the article, just so I have a place where I'm like collecting each supporting piece of evidence.
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As a writer, you know which topics or which supporting points go in which place, which can be more confusing than you think sometimes, depending on the piece that you're writing.
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But if you get a little wrong, it's okay because the editor is going to help you.
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Yeah, I wouldn't use the code because people won't recognize it.
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But I mean, I think if I was doing editing work more generally, then breaking things up with sub headers is definitely one of the things that I would be flagging and I would, you know, write the more, tell the writer to add something in to break the piece up.
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I think sub headers are something you're very aware of because they're part of the structural planning of the piece.
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Like, usually, the sub headers will be written first, at least in my case, you have the outline and then you know exactly what all the sections are, and then I would probably just go and write the sub headers in before writing the sections.
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As a writer.
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How do you approach this code?
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As a writer.
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At OSP we have a process where we use a content brief.
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That's an important part of the process that happens before writing.
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It's an opportunity to define the content chunks so you can spend time before the creative work thinking about how you're going to break up your content.
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It's much easier to move your points around in the brief and it's an opportunity for you to check your SPOC, your logic.
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So check out our other episode on SPOC to find out more about that.
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So that means once you've outlined that in your brief, when you sit down to write, the hard work that you've done will pay dividends because you've reduced this overwhelming, daunting task and now you're just writing text blocks.
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They're contained, focused.
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I've noticed for me when I write that's so important, that process, it's so valuable to have the content brief and to chunk my content beforehand when it comes to the subheadings, the words in the subheadings as I'm writing.
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That's very much an afterthought.
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Typically I will write garbage subheadings and come back and finesse them later, get the content out, write my text blocks and then, when it's close to done, I'll come back and polish the wording of the subheadings and generally, if I think I haven't nailed it, I'll flag it for my editor to help me out.
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Often as an editor, because they're not so close to the writing, they might have fresh insight, be able to put a beautiful heading together.
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I've written a lot of content, assets pieces, posts in this world and for our clients and for us, and I definitely look at the structure and I've definitely got some bit of my hindbrain that sends me alarm signals.
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If a paragraph starts to look too long, at that point I at least want to break it up and then see what makes sense, how I could introduce a new header as this, then back to the storytelling part of it to give another clue about what's in there.
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But it's funny because somehow one of the differences between book writing and web writing is that our web formats are generally so much shorter and it's actually okay sometimes to put in a header every couple of hundred words, right?
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If my whole blog post is on the 800 words or seven or a thousand words, having three or four headers, which means every couple of hundred words, is actually not a problem.
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So that's quite interesting and I definitely think about breaking things up along the way.
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Yeah, I mean subhead and head serve a lot of different purposes.
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They are informative.
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They are also the hook which is hopefully drawing the reader in.
00:14:33.945 --> 00:14:48.985
They also just sort of provide a way to quickly scan something and see if it's interesting or relevant to you as a writer, I think it just helps you organize your ideas more easily.
00:14:48.985 --> 00:15:02.697
Sometimes I'll even write subheads or headings before I even get into the meat of the article, just so I have a place where I'm collecting each supporting piece of evidence.
00:15:02.697 --> 00:15:16.515
As a writer, you know which topics or which supporting points go in which place, which can be more confusing than you think sometimes, depending on the piece that you're writing.
00:15:16.515 --> 00:15:21.897
But if you get a little wrong, it's okay because the editor is going to help you.
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Yeah, I wouldn't use the code because people won't recognize it.
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I mean, I think if I was doing editing work more generally, then breaking things up with subheaders is definitely one of the things that I would be flagging and I would write the more tell the writer to add something in to break the piece up.
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I think sub headers are something you're very aware of because they're part of the structural planning of the piece.
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Like, usually, the sub headers will be written first at least in my case, you have the outline and then you know exactly what all the sections are, and then I would probably just go and write the sub headers in before writing the sections.
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For the reader to have a great experience.
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Here's why this editing code is extremely important.
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The subhead and headcodes are so important for readers so they kind of act like telegraphs when you come to a page of writing.
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They're really going to help you be able to scan down a page, get the lay of the land, the topography of the piece.
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They help you know what you're in for.
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Basically, headings and subheadings should lead you by the hand and take you predictably to the summary or the conclusion.
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As a reader of online content, we all know that white space is important, so the headings help you create that white space.
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The structural code of subhead is related to the idea of avoiding a wall of text and we have an editing code of wall.
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Check out our episode on wall.
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An article I was reading recently that was talking about the psychotherapy of writing for websites and writing on the web had this nice line in it that I really liked, which was about allowing space for your reader and that having subheadings gives your eye a place to rest and allows the reader space to breathe, and I really liked that.
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It's about having empathy for your reader and just giving them a chance to break up their reading journey and hopefully it makes them feel a bit more comfortable because they're not confronted with a wall of text and they do have a place to land on headings that hopefully are meaningful.
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So I'll put a link in the show notes to that article so you can check it out.
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Meaningful subheadings, not clever ones.
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Your customers don't read as much as you think they do.
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Customers skim your docs.
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Skim and scan.
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That's what it's all about.
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We've coined a term AX, audience experience.
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I'm not sure we're really going to use it, but we want the experience of consuming our content to be as straightforward as possible, as interesting, as pleasurable, as informative as possible.
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And when I keep my text chunked into semantically meaningful bits, when I give extra clues like bold texts or lists which are not part of this code, also breaking things up, also adding headers in between some of those paragraphs, all can contribute to making a more easily consumable piece of content.
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In the end, like I say almost every episode, what we want the reader's experience to be is I understand what this is very quickly.
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I can make a decision whether I'm going to read and invest in this text very quickly, and so the subheaders let us scan through the high points of the story and then help make that decision.
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As a reader.
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There are a lot of reasons why head and subhead are important.
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Personally, I've been turned off reading something when it's just like a long block of text.
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If I see that, I'm probably thinking to myself like, is this an academic paper or a philosophy paper?
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You know, it sort of sets in my mind that I'm just going to be reading something really dry.
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So it doesn't really set good expectations to just have long blocks of text.
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Also, just visually it's important.
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It's just more interesting to have headers and subheaders.
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There's not a lot the brain can do with just a solid wall of text.
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It also helps because it can give your mind a bit of a break when you're jumping from one paragraph to the next and give you a pause to just process what you have just read.
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And it also makes it really clear when you're shifting to a new topic or a new supporting point.
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I think, given the kinds of writing that we're talking about so like blog pieces and case studies, things that are like B2B marketing people will be reading them on computers and smartphones.
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They'll probably be reading them in the context of, you know, either like a coffee break where they're trying to do a bit of extra work, research, or whatever it's been recommended to them on linkedin, so they might not be trying to give the piece their maximal attention in that circumstance.
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And likewise, if they are somebody from marketing department or whatever other Development team even trying to research something, then they'll be reading it, but they'll have 20 other articles open at the same time as well.
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So I think, in all the cases the things that we're publishing Trying to compete for a reader's attention and to maintain their attention and keep them reading to the end.
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That being the case, we want to have things that minimize the cognitive load for the reader.
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You know they don't open the article and think, oh, it's just a massive wall of text.
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Instead, they can skim over it and see, okay, these are already the first main four or five points.
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Oh, and they look good.
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And then they go through it and then, if they want to pause, they can pause between two subheadings as well.
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I hope you enjoyed this episode, dear listeners, and next time you find yourself writing a longer piece, think about how you can make it easy on your reader by adding some stopping points along the way, clearly telegraphed with subheadings.
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Share your examples or questions with us via Twitter and open underscore strategy or email.
00:22:10.885 --> 00:22:13.930
Hello at open strategy partners dot com.
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This was one of the editorial codes we use at OSP.
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We'll be sharing more of them as we go.
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If you'd like to learn more in the meantime, come over to open strategy partners dot com, have a look at our writer enablement, workshops, case study offering or get in touch to talk about your strategy or product communication needs.
00:22:33.632 --> 00:22:39.059
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00:24:40.884 --> 00:24:45.167
It's much easier to move around your blocks thinking about bullet points maybe.
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No, sorry, let's okay.
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Fudge, that was going so well and then I said that's cheaper thing about the bullet points Okay, let me try that again as a writer.