Re: How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?

["Raj Machhan" <raj -dot- machhan -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I guess the primary objective of any technical document is to present
information in a manner that is simple and easy to understand. Any document,
regardless of the complexity of its subject, having more than four levels
has a problem with its structure. It may require a lot of thought and
ingenuity, but I guess a technical writer should have the ability to put
across information within the four levels. One way of dealing with complex
topics, which seemingly require more levels, is by making use of styles,
boxes, notes, tables, fonts, colors, and other such features.

Raj


On 10/13/07, Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Butler, Darren J Ctr 584 CBSS/GBHAC wrote:
> >
> > The general rule for most military documents is a primary heading with
> > no more than 4 subordinates. The philosophy is this; if the information
> > is well-organized, you shouldn't need a 5th level.
>
> The philosophy is a suggestion (in the hypnotic sense) that we writers
> let the readers do some of the work of understanding what they read. It
> serves as a reminder that (some) audiences have very plastic
> intelligence--they'll get their heads around many levels of depth beyond
> 3 or 5, even when the deep information is structured and presented as
> only 3 or 5 levels of information in the document they're reading.
>
> So anyway, I think the levels limit is one of those rare and beautiful
> insights into the cognitive abilities that accompany reading skills. At
> least on this point, we can lay down the burden of guiding readers every
> micro-step of the way :-)
>
>
> Ned Bedinger
> doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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