The power of subheadings

Have you ever become lost in a long article of text? Perhaps you’ve started to read something but it was so long that it lost your attention quickly. It sounds like what that article needed was subheadings. 

Like the above heading, which gave you a succinct insight into the topic of this blog post, subheadings also play an important role in writing. Subheadings convey a break in the text and help signify a new idea or topic is about to begin. They’re great for helping readers digest and process longer pieces of content. 

Here’s a subheading, for example

But when used well, subheadings don’t just help your reader keep track of where they’re up to. Subheadings can also be used to add shock, suspense, humour or intrigue.

As you can see above, I used a subheading that is self-aware, to offer a touch of lightness and humour to this article! It didn’t really tell you what this section was about, but it did (hopefully) keep your attention.

For the skimmer

Here, I’ve used the subheading “For the skimmer” to catch your attention and to tell you that now I will talk about people who skim content. 

Subheadings are really helpful for people who are time poor or may not want to read the entire article that has been written. In a case where someone wants to find a piece of information relevant to them, they can skim their way through the subheadings and find the text block that will provide the information relevant to them. 

And, if you use your subheadings really carefully, you can actually give someone the entire gist of your article even if they only read the subheadings! 

An example of subheadings from Crossbeam

In the image below, you’ll see two examples of subheadings from a Crossbeam article. Both subheadings in the example below give a brief insight into what the paragraph is about, and the paragraph reinforces what the subheading suggests it will. That’s helpful to enable people reading the article to follow the writer’s line of thinking. But more than that - these subheadings add intrigue and signpost for skimmers. 

Final thoughts 

Next time you’re writing an article or longform piece of content, really think about your audience and how you want to get and hold their attention. A good subheading can go a long way in ensuring your audience reads deeply, stays engaged and gets to the end of the article with a better understanding of that content you set out.