Pretty much every book I read about grant writing talks about the power of title, headings, and subheadings.

It makes sense. They are like signposts helping to guide the busy reviewer trough the document. They indicate what will come next. But the most important advantage is often forgotten: It helps the writer to organize the writing. Most people do not make use of them.

The first thing I do when I edit a proposal is using headings and subheadings to structure the document for myself. It helps me to see the main parts, to make sense of the whole story and move sentences and paragraphs to the right place. It provides also a very quick and simple way to check if we have considered all criteria from the Request for Proposal.

So, what makes a good heading and subheading?

In its simplest form it is only a description of what is next like “Background”, “Methodology”, “Excellence”. A better way is to extend by a very short summary of what the section entails for example “Excellence – A new way to do xyz”. Again this prepares the reader for what will come. It also helps to refer and find passages when they discuss the proposals during a reviewer board meeting.

How many headings and subheadings do we need?

That depends on word and page limits, no simple answer. But for a typical grant a good rule of thumb is a main heading every 1-2 pages and 1-3 subheadings per page. More and it gets busy. I tend to put the main headings in bold and the subheadings in italic.