Keep readers reading, skimmers scanning
Show the parts For good subheads, break your message into chunks and label the parts.
What if I told you there was a magic wand that kept readers reading and skimmers scanning — even after their attention begins to wane?
Friends, there is such a tool, and it’s called a subhead.
Why subheads?
Well-written subheads can:
- Draw readers in. A compelling subhead can turn skimmers into readers.
- Help people find what they want quickly. Audience members skim your message, looking at subheads and other display copy first, before reading the paragraphs below.
- Break copy up. Good subheads break copy up into accessible, bite-sized chunks, ventilate a gray page and make your message look easier to read. And when your message looks easier to read, more people will read it.
- Keep readers reading. “Subheads increased reading for skimmers and for those whose attention was beginning to wane,” according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack III study.
- Communicate to nonreaders. Well-written subheads can convey your key ideas to flippers, skimmers and others who won’t read your paragraphs, no matter what.
- Help visitors read and understand. Subheads “make it vastly easier for users to read and understand text,” write Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen, the authors of How People Read on the Web.
- Make your message more memorable. “A writer who knows the big parts can name them for the reader” with subheads, writes Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at The Poynter Institute. “The reader who sees the big parts is more likely to remember the whole story.”
“By far,” write Pernice, et al., “the single most important thing you can do to help users consume content is to use meaningful [subheads], and make [them] visually pop as compared to body text.”
So how can you write subheads right?
How to write great subheads
To get the word out via subheads:
1. Show the architecture of your piece. Think of your subheads as the Roman numeral outline of your piece. What are your topics I, II and III? Those are your subheads.
2. Say something! The best subheads make your message skimmable. So don’t just label a section of text with the topic — “Mortgage services,” for instance. Tell the reader something. What about mortgage services?
Subheads that say “Problem,” “Solution” and “Result,” for instance, mean “Read this section to learn about the problem.” That’s not scanning, that’s reading!
Instead, write a robust subhead that tells what the problem is. As famous writing coach Ann Wylie says, “Write subheads that reveal, rather than conceal, your contents.”
3. Answer, don’t just ask, questions. If you raise a question in the subhead, answer it in display copy — a bold-faced lead-in, highlighted key words or a bulleted list, maybe.
If your subhead asks, “Why subheads?” for instance, you might answer the question in a list with bold-faced lead-ins:
- Draw readers in. …
- Help people find what they want quickly. …
- Break copy up. …
Otherwise, your question tells skimmers, “read below to find out.” If they wanted to read, that’s what they’d be doing!
How to format subheads
To tap all of your subheads’ superpowers, make them stand out.
1. Give equal emphasis to items of equal importance. Help readers determine the topic’s weight and hierarchy at a glance. Use H3 and H4 heading tags if you have subheads and sub-subheads.
Need more layers? Move on to sections with bold-faced lead-ins.
2. Use enough subheads — but not too many. You’ll have a subhead for each topic in the body of your story, plus one subhead to separate the body from the conclusion. So if you have three topics, you’ll have four subheads.
If you have a subhead for every paragraph, you have too many subheads. Include a subhead every four to six paragraphs, suggest the folks at the BBC News Academy.
3. Keep them short. Limit subheads to a single line — on your phone. (Tip: Email your message to yourself and check it on your mobile to make sure.) That probably means up to five words.
Longer, and they’ll start looking like text, not display copy. And then you’ll lose the attention-grabbing power of subheads.
4. Grab the eye. “Subheads only get looked at if they actually look like subheads,” write Pernice, et al. “If the sections and their subheads are not different enough, then people will not be able to use them as the lighthouses they are meant to be.”
Think larger text, bold-faced type, more white space.
Don’t drop the subheads.
Writing subheads “may be the most important thing you do,” according to Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group usability consultancy.
So whatever you do, don’t drop the subheads.
“If you are not calling out sections … with subheads, you are making a big mistake!” write Pernice, et al. “If you take nothing else [away], please take this: Use subheads and subsubheads.”
