Editing Project:Observatory Users Manual (section)

====== Follow these best practices for headings and subheadings ======
 
* You can format the section titles within your Article body (headings/subheadings) at two points:
*# In the Google Doc: in the toolbar, change a heading from Normal text to Heading 1.
*#* Best practice: Keep '''section header formatting''' of Articles '''within the range of Heading 1→Heading 3''' when setting up sections of an Article in a Google Doc before converting.
*# After you convert via Pandoc to wikitext: change, using search and replace function, <nowiki>'''</nowiki>bolded line headings<nowiki>'''</nowiki> with three single apostrophes into <nowiki>==Wikitext Headings==</nowiki> with two equal signs around the line. If you have a subheading within a section, use three equal signs: <nowiki>===Wikitext Subheadings===</nowiki>.
* Wikitext guide: Don’t combine heading tags (equal signs) plus bold formatting—using just headline-style formatting will be sufficient, and bold formatting is redundant and discouraged.
**There is no need to make headings bold (with three straight apostrophes in the code); they are bold by default:
***'''Unnecessary:''' <nowiki>== '''Heading''' ==</nowiki>
***'''Good:''' <nowiki>== Heading ==</nowiki>
**The space between the heading text and the equal sign is optional. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s flush or if there is a space.
 
#Title is the page title—don’t use this except over your Article’s Headline. 
#*Use: It’s the title of the Article that appears at the top of the page. It can only be used once per Article.
#H1 is the highest level of an Article’s sections. You can use it for section titles like “Introduction” and “Background” or longer ones; it’s also not uncommon to only use this level throughout the Article body for all sections. Use H1 the way you normally use bold section headers in a Google Doc (if you format them as Heading 1 level in the Google Doc as opposed to simple bolding, they should automatically be converted during the Pandoc/workflow process the way you want them to look). 
#*Use: Many Articles will only use this level of heading as the deepest level of heading, and that’s fine; H2–H3 are not necessary, H4–H5 are inadvisable, and H6–H7 and beyond are not possible on the Observatory.
#*Table of contents (TOC) appearance: It appears flush-left in the table of contents on Article pages.
#* Short Articles that don’t have tables of contents might not even use this or any lower levels of section headers at all.
#* On the Observatory site, the menu calls this “Heading” (don’t confuse this with “Sub-heading 1,” which is actually H2, below!).
#H2 is the second-highest level of an Article’s sections. Use medium to sparingly.
#*Use: If you have subsections within H1 that need to appear in the TOC. (If it shouldn’t go in the TOC, just format the text as bold rather than using H2.)
#*TOC appearance: It appears one indentation to the right of H1.
#*On the Observatory site, the menu calls this “Sub-heading 1.”
#H3 is the third-highest level of an Article’s sections. Use sparingly.
#*Use: If you have subsections within H2 that need to appear in the TOC. (If it shouldn’t go in the TOC, just format the text as bold rather than using H3.)
#*TOC appearance: It appears one indentation to the right of H2 (at this point, things start to become indented so deeply that the TOC sidebar is going to be hard to read—that’s why our developer advises against using H3–H5, and the Observatory does not allow H6).
#*On the Observatory site, the menu calls this “Sub-heading 2.”
#<span style="color:#FF0000;">H4 is the fourth-highest level of an Article’s sections (one level deeper than H3). Don’t use</span>. Rather, just use the formatting you need to (bold, list, etc.) rather than formatting as a heading/subheading.
#<span style="color:#FF0000;">H5 is the fifth-highest level of an Article’s sections (one level deeper than H4). Don’t use</span>. Rather, just use the formatting you need to (bold, list, etc.) rather than formatting as a heading/subheading.
#<span style="color:#FF0000;">H6 has no way to render on the Observatory at all. Don’t use</span>.
#<span style="color:#FF0000;">H7 is what MediaWiki calls “Preformatted” for coding purposes. Don’t use</span>.
#H8 is MediaWiki’s default way to style block quotes (we use “blockquote” [adj.] and “block quote” [n.]; note that they add a space per the noun styling, calling it “Block quote” in the dropdown Header menu selection on top of text fields). This renders as a body paragraph that is indented on both the left and right sides.
#*Use: This is for quotations that are at least three lines long that should appear in their own separate paragraph(s).
#*Does not appear in the TOC.