I found this Lynda video to be informative about headings, summaries, subheadings, and links. All of these are very useful for a website type format, however links are not helpful on a written paper. A heading (the title) is very helpful to the reader because that will let them know what the whole paper is about. Subheadings are super useful in longer papers or lab reports because it breaks the texts into sections. The subheading name will allow the reader to know what the section is about and this helps them to decide if they think that section will interest them, and if not they might move on to see what the next subheading is about. I find myself reading what the subheading is about when I am reading news articles to see if that section catches my interest. I find it more helpful when subheadings have a different format than the rest of the text such as being bold or a couple size bigger because it allows them to stand out. I feel that summaries are more common on websites that give a summary of a news article, however in lab reports that I have done in the past, usually we have to write an abstract and this give the summary of the whole report. Headings and subheadings in particular are a very useful way to organize your papers to make it easier for the reader to look at.

I actually already use this — this exact format that was used in the video. When I’m writing user documentation, I break it up into the title/headline, an intro/summary, subheadings and their respective content, and a resources section at the end with links. The links get referenced throughout the documentation and also are collected at the bottom. This way, the user/reader knows which links are relevant to their topic as well as the whole project (analogous to parenthetical citations and a works cited page).

I think this video is really useful for technical writing. Using signposts gives a more elegant design and it also helps search engines catalog the document’s content. Headings and subheadings are most commonly their own HTML tag which differentiates their content from the rest, even allowing direct linking to that part of a webpage. For example, on the Math Department’s webpage of faculty members: http://www.math.vt.edu/people.php?content=list&type=Faculty, I can jump straight to the L section by appending #L to the end of the URL. That functions as a direct link to that section of the webpage. PDFs have similar functionality online for linking a particular page of many.

As a science major, I have been reading a lot of scholarly journal articles. The information is very dense and the language is hard to understand. However, the style of these articles follows the advice given in this video. The first thing you read in a journal article is the abstract, which summarizes the entire article and helps you get an idea of what the full article contains. It can help you decide if the work will be helpful before reading through it entirely. There are also headings to differentiate background information, methods, results, the discussion, and the conclusion. Without these in place, I could not imagine having to dissect the article and find relevant information. These headings may not be in place to make important information stand out but it does make the article easier to read and more appealing. These articles also do a good job at avoiding wordiness. Although they contain a lot of information, it is usually concise and relevant.

The F shaped reading pattern is helpful to know. I hope to publish articles in my future and now I have a better idea of where to place text so that it is more likely to be read. And although it isn’t common to include links, I do see how it would be beneficial to hyperlink to websites offering more information pertinent to my research.

This video was a great resource to help learn about headings, subheadings, summaries, and links. Being able to properly format headings, summaries, and subheadings really help the readability of whatever you are writing. Links are a very important aspect of summary writing when it comes to online documents or articles. Being able to insert a link for the reader to just click on and take you to another important page to gain more information is very helpful for the reader. However, one bad aspect in regards to online links are these “teaser links” the video referred to. Teaser links are becoming more and more prevalent in the online world, but for our purpose, when we are writing professional documents for commercial or other companies, teaser links are not looked as appropriate since they often take you on tangents that are not related to the document. So being able to limit the use of these teaser links, and incorporating useful summaries, headings, and subheadings will add to the overall content of your document.

I found that this video analogously treats a document structure just like a road where signposts are used to guide the reader in the way of understanding our webpage or text. Confusing signposts would surely divert the reader away from getting the main points of our writings as they would tend to just skip the whole paragraph just like how a driver would surely make a detour if he or she is not confident with the specific road. The F-pattern is actually what most readers nowadays use when skimming a document so it is our responsibility to adapt that structure into our document design by using the signposts suggested by the video.