Categorizing paragraphs in a stack exchange answer

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Introduction

You asked:

What would the headings be for? The main idea/topic of each paragraph or of each "section"?

My answer here is going to attempt to show how headings are used and uses headings to demonstrate.

Sections

All well structured pieces of writing will contain sections. Many essays etc. will contain an introduction just like this answer. If there is one, that would be the first section.

A heading will generally be provided to head the introduction, and a heading will then follow the introduction to show that the introduction has ended and the next section has started. This way, if you wish to re-read a particular section you can easily pick that section out.

Headings and Sub-headings

Headings

You would provide a heading for your section, and the section can cover many different aspects of what you are talking about. If it helps, you may wish to split the section into parts and this is where sub-headings come in.

Sub-Headings

Sub-headings provide a split point for each part of a large section, making navigation even easier whilst also providing flow and even context within the writing.

Heading Markup

Within StackExchange you can use 2 methods. You can either use HTML markup or you can use hashes.

HTML Markup

Those familiar with this method can use <h1></h1>, <h2></h2>... throughout the text when structuring for posting. This can be cumbersome when typing a quick answer on a smartphone for example so you may choose to use the hashes.

Hashes

You can use a single # to create a h1 (main) header, with more hashes for sub-headers such as ## for h2 or ### for h3.

Concluding summary

So you see that headings are there to split your writing into sections, giving your sections a name, whilst providing a means to navigate through the text to find any specific relevant part.

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