Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Getting Headings Right

As discussed in Chapter 1, headings are easy to create and format—just add the right number of equal signs on either side (???). This section focuses on what to put between the equal signs.

Sometimes headings violate one of Wikipedia’s rules. You may not get a warning on your user talk page if you make an error, but by following a few simple rules, you can create excellent headings every time.

Wording and Capitalization

Many of the guidelines for headings are the same as for article titles, as discussed on Common Naming Mistakes. The top seven rules are the most important (and the most common opportunities for error):

• Capitalize only the first letter of the first word, letters in acronyms, and the first letter of proper nouns. All other letters are in lower case. Thus: “Funding of projects,” not “Funding of Projects.”

• Don’t restate the article title or a higher level heading. For example, the article Greta Garbo has a section called “Later career”. “Her later career” or “Garbo’s later career” would be wrong.

• Keep headings short. You can sum up almost any subject in 10 words. Thus: “Housing boom in the early 1990s”, not “Housing boom in the early 1990s lasts for only a few years”. Long headings, as in this example, tend to reveal the storyline. The goal of a heading is to invite readers to read the section and find out what happened.

  Long headings are also a problem when a different article links to that section heading. Not only ...