← Chapter 4
Professional Writing · Chapter 4

The Outline Test Bench

Copy your headings alone onto a blank page and read them straight through: most structural problems in a report are visible in ten seconds there and invisible in the full draft for days. This is that page. Reorder the stack, fix the levels, switch each genre label to an informative heading, and delete the miscellany bucket until all five checks pass.
The heading stack of a nine-page report
Move with ↑ ↓. Change level with ← →. Press TEXT to swap between the genre label and the informative version. Press × to delete a heading.
Two rules keep a hierarchy honest. Never skip a level — a level 2 followed by a level 4 is a claim about structure that is not true. And never create a lone subheading: a division into one part is not a division.
—
The stack, alone, in order