Equivalent facts can lead to different choices depending on how they are framed.
More quotesWriters pretend headings are furniture. They are closer to stage directions. Before the first sentence has a chance to defend itself, the label tells the reader what sort of thing is happening and which interpretation deserves attention. “Using your new washing machine” turns items, categories and equipment into clothes, colours and a drum. The prose has improved by exactly zero words. Context has arrived from above and done the sentences’ unpaid labour. This should embarrass anyone who boasts that the body copy “contains all the information”. A warehouse contains all sorts of useful things. Retrieval is the bloody point.
The laziest headings—Overview, Background, Additional information—organise acreage. They prove that a page has sections and decline to say why a reader should enter any of them. Worse headings pre-judge the evidence. “Customer enthusiasm rises” instructs the eye to interpret a tiny selective survey as support. “Is enthusiasm confined to existing customers?” sends the same numbers into a different argument. A heading can smuggle the verdict into the room before the data takes its coat off.
In a medical leaflet, “When your child has a fever” and “Possible side effects” can sit above identical symptoms and create different retrieval tasks. In a proposal, “Cost” invites defence; “Costs that change the decision” demands relevance. The words below may remain untouched. The reader arrives carrying a different question.