Question About Using Headings in Your Book Files

[David Ellis]

I think this is the right board. If not, Tim can move it.

As I understand it, you want to use a set Heading 1 for all the chapter headings. Good. Got that. 

What about Heading 2? What happens if you want a Heading 2?

For the non-fiction book I just finished, I use Heading 1 for the main topics or sections. Each section has three to six subsections. I end up with about a dozen chapters and about 40 smaller sections. I would like to keep the smaller sections delineated, but I don't really want 40 chapters in a 35K word book.

I implore your wisdom and experience.

Also I included a couple of chapters of my novel at the end for another 6 thousand words, but I don't think that counts for word count and it requires its own section in the table of contents.

Speaking of which, if I make a table of contents, do I include the dozen main sections or all the sections?

[Ria Stone]

Jul 7, 2016 18:30:38 GMT -8 David Ellis said:

I think this is the right board. If not, Tim can move it.

As I understand it, you want to use a set Heading 1 for all the chapter headings. Good. Got that. 

What about Heading 2? What happens if you want a Heading 2?

For the non-fiction book I just finished, I use Heading 1 for the main topics or sections. Each section has three to six subsections. I end up with about a dozen chapters and about 40 smaller sections. I would like to keep the smaller sections delineated, but I don't really want 40 chapters in a 35K word book.

I implore your wisdom and experience.

Also I included a couple of chapters of my novel at the end for another 6 thousand words, but I don't think that counts for word count and it requires its own section in the table of contents.

Speaking of which, if I make a table of contents, do I include the dozen main sections or all the sections?

For your non-fiction work, determine how the reader will find certain information, how many headings are needed to will guide them to that information.

I do think you should made headings for your book excerpts.

When I make a TOC, I envision the print version even though you lose the page numbering in the eBook version. Formatting the TOC in Word allows for many headings when you set up the TOC.

Vaguely I recall that some non-fiction books included short descriptions of the chapter contents to help readers find the information they need. I think you can do this in an eBook TOC by adding text to the heading and formatting the non-head text in a text font, letting the software make line breaks. Use fixed spaces to make the main head naturally break from the text on the page.

I followed my own instructions and got a sample but can't add it to this post :-)

I usually go around the barn when there is a simpler solution :-)

[Julie Harris]

If you only want the chapters appearing in the toc, then simply bold the sub headings. For print though, you can have it however you want it. I have found that heading 2 often appears the same as heading 1 in ebook format.