Numbering the headings?

["Geoff Hart" <geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca>]

John David Hickey's first draft of a section of a manual 
<<...has been reviewed and the comments are starting to 
trickle back. One of the suggestions I intend to fight is to 
number the headings (1.1, 1.2.1, 1.6.2.5). Management 
thinks would help the reader remember where they are in the 
procedure.>>

Without knowing about the specific context, my initial 
reaction is negative: numbers will never serve that purpose 
for anyone other than those who have learned to memorize 
subsections of legislation, contracts, or standards. That 
probably doesn't represent your audience, who you described 
as primarily nontechnical.

Think of it this way: if numbers are really so darned helpful, 
then why do we need words in the headings to explain what 
part of the procedure the reader has reached? That's not to say 
that numbered lists are unimportant, because the numbers do 
indeed provide a firm grasp of sequence and a nice handle to 
use when remembering how far you've proceeded. They're 
also a very useful cross-referencing tool in really large, 
complex documents. Even then, a page number 
supplemented by the heading title strikes me as more 
friendly. However:

<<This numbering style can be useful if you have many sub-
sections and the documents are long and complicated.>>

That's no always a reliable assumption. (There are cases 
where it might be true, such as in extremely complex and 
detailed procedures, but these are comparitively rare.) If the 
procedure is so complex that it requires more than three levels 
of heading, then it's a clear clue that you need to reassess how 
you've presented the procedure. I find that three levels of 
heading (excluding the chapter title) is the most that the 
average reader will tolerate, with the caveat that this is 
anecdotal evidence, unsupported by rigorous research. The 
most common way to simplify a structure in this manner is to 
treat each first-level heading in the procedure as its own 
chapter (thereby eliminating one level of heading); you can 
then group the relevant chapters into sections. This has 
another benefit that numbers alone lack: it provides a simple, 
high-level overview (in words, not numbers) of what this 
phase in the larger procedure represents.

For example, let's say your manual is about buying a 
computer and its peripherals. The sections might be about 
selecting a cpu, selecting storage, selecting a printer, and so 
on. So rather than having the reader remember the whole 
hierarchy of buying a computer, they focus on one aspect of 
buying the computer (i.e., one section) at a time. Now let's 
assume the reader is thinking about printers, which form a 
single section. Within that section, you can have separate 
chapters on color, engine speed, RAM, consumable costs, 
etc. etc. The hierarchy is very clear: "I'm looking at buying a 
computer, and I want to figure out what type of printer to buy 
with it: I'll look at whether I need a color printer, a fast 
printer, a printer that can..." Try achieving that effect with 
numbers!

<<I don't think that if the reader really is lost, knowing that 
they are in section 1.2.4.1 will help them find themselves.>>

I'd agree, for the reasons listed earlier. However, one 
compromise you'll sometimes see is the use of tiny numbers 
in the margins to provide ease of cross-reference, with the 
body text using only the text headings.

<<Are there other arguments I could be making to defend an 
non-numbering Heading style?>>

Personal experience usually works far better than abstract 
theory. So head down to your library and photocopy a few 
pages of any legislation from the Revised Statutes for your 
province. Create a heading hierarchy in your word processor 
that uses just the section numbers, minus the text beneath 
them, and provide a printout of the document to the people 
who proposed the numbering. Ask them to read through the 
document once, then take it away from them and ask them to 
identify a section number chosen at random: offer to buy a 
beer for anyone who can tell you all the preceding headings 
in the hierarchy. You won't be buying much beer. <g> Now 
present them with the same document, but with proper section 
titles that explain what the section refers to, minus the 
numbers. Repeat your little experiment, but this time, don't 
offer any beer, because most of them will quickly remember 
the headings that preceded the current heading. The 
prosecution rests... <g>

--Geoff Hart @8^{)}  geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca  (Pointe-Claire, Quebec)
"Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all those sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I 
suspect 
that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence." George Miller, "The Magical Number Seven" (1956)