3

Normally I use the "Smaller Subheader" formatting to make my paragraphs easier to read. To my opinion, it works like a summary and helps readers to get the main idea by a quick glance. This is how my answers look like:

First statement
-
details, details
details, details

Second statement
-
details, details
details, details

However, I've received a comment to this answer, which says it was not very polite:

Downvoted because you don't have to scream your opinion in a large+bold font.

I've never thought of headers as of "screaming" text. Is that using of headers commonly-accepted?

  • 1
    In my opinion, your formatting isn't that hard to read. However, summaries aren't headings. Personally, I'd prefer to see the first summarizing sentence of a paragraph inline in default-size bold and reserve headings for actual (short) titles to segment a larger post. – Arminius Jul 16 '18 at 23:49
6

Please use headers only as section titles, not to make some sentences larger. A post that is really only four paragraphs long doesn't need sections.

“You don't have to scream your opinion in a large+bold font” is not a very nice way to put it, but the complaint is fully justified. Downvoting for this is exaggerated (but permitted: the only forbidden reason to downvote is if you vote on the poster instead of voting on the post), the proper reaction would be to edit your post to fit the community norms.

  • "Please use headers only as section titles, not to make some sentences larger." — that principle is exactly what I adhere to – enkryptor Jul 17 '18 at 22:00
  • 2
    @enkryptor A section title is rarely a full sentence and the section should make sense on its own and without the title. This is not at all the case in your post. Each sentence for which you used header formatting is really the first sentence of the following paragraph. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 17 '18 at 22:01
4

While I think a downvote is possibly excessive, I can see why they don't like that font usage. It is rather large on various platforms, so it does look like "shouting" and is often unnecessary.

Generally, use of bold or a separator line, is enough. Use of these larger fonts can be useful in a much larger post to help break things up, but as far as I'm concerned, as long as it is readable, that's what matters.

  • So we have headers only for large posts, correct? – enkryptor Jul 16 '18 at 17:26
  • @enkryptor It seems so. I tend to use a lot of headers when the posts are either medium size or particularly large. It helps a lot to break up the post, but shouldn't be used if the post is just a paragraph of two. What I do for shorter posts is to use bold on the relevant sentences (especially if put in bullet points), and to use a separator line to delimit ideas. – forest Jul 22 '18 at 1:02

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