Hi there, One reason there is so much debate is the HTML 4.01 spec actually whimps out of making a call ;) In other words, it doesn't actually say if skipping a level is wrong; it just says "some people" think it's wrong.
What the spec DOES say is that the headings are ordered from 1 to 6 in order of importance, so it does actually imply that they should always be kept in order. Personally I think they should always be in order, never jump from 1 to 3 to 2, always go 1-2-3. So as you'd expect I would go with this: > <h1>My site title<h1> > ...navigation... > <h2>My section name</h2> > <h3>Latest Articles</h3> > <h4>Article 1 Title</h4> > <p>paragraph</p> > <h4>Article 2 Title</h4> > <p>paragraph</p> I would actually ask whether the "latest articles" heading is actually needed - do you separate "latest" from "older" on the same page? If not, then just remove the "latest articles" heading, since their presence implies that they are the latest articles (as a general rule, people do not publish their oldest articles at the top of the page). If you *do* divide the articles then you need to leave in the semantically correct latest/old headings to define the sections. It would be incorrect to bump up the articles' heading level if they are actually contained within another section. As a general rule, when in doubt about heading levels I think "how would this go in XHTML 2.0, using <section> and <h> elements?". It helps think in terms of sections and levels/groupings of content. I hope that helps :) cheers, Ben Buchanan -- --- <http://www.200ok.com.au/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
