Titles and subtitles

Editorial landmarks like titles and headers are the fundamental human interface device in Web pages, just as they are in any print publication. A consistent approach to titles, headlines, and subheadings in your documents will help your readers navigate through a complex set of Web pages.

Text styles

The text styles we recommend:

Headline style: Bold, capitalize initial letters of words

Down style: Bold, capitalize first word only

Page titles

Web page titles are designated in the HTML document head section with the TITLE tag. The title is crucial for several reasons. Often the title is the first thing users with slow Internet connections will see; it also becomes the text for any bookmarks the reader makes to your pages. In addition, most search engines regard the page title as the primary descriptor of page content, so a descriptive title increases the chance that a page will appear as the result of a related search query.

The page title should:

Always consider what your page title will look like in a long list of bookmarks. Will the title remind the reader of what he or she found interesting about your pages?

Text formatting for Web documents

Some points about text formatting specific to the Web: