4.3 Four Heading Paragraph Styles

Heading Paragraph styles define the structure of our Print Book, PDF Book, Ebook and Website Pages. They are essential for creating an automatic Table of Contents and for placing information such as chapter titles into headers or footers.

Because many conversion programs, as well as web search engines, look for Heading 1 to define the beginning of the book as well as what the book is about, we will use the Heading 1 Paragraph Style for the title of the book. We will then use the Heading 2 Paragraph Style for Chapter Titles and Heading 3 for Section Titles. Heading 4 will be an optional Paragraph Style for Sections that are divided into major subjects that we want to appear in our Table of Contents. Here is what these four heading styles look like in the Libre Writer Styles Window:

The Heading 1 paragraph style will only be used for the title of our book and will not appear in our Table of Contents.

When a chapter or section title is assigned to a heading style, it can appear in our Print Book Table of Contents. It will also appear in the Outline box on the left side of in a PDF document. Heading styles will also create our Ebook Table of Contents and be used to divide both Ebook pages and website pages.

The Heading 2 paragraph style is used to format the Chapter Titles of our book. These use a large font size and typically have a large margin above and below the text.

Chapter Titles typically have a number in front of them such as 3 or Chapter 3 - meaning this is the beginning of the third chapter. There will typically be 8 to 10 chapters in our book.

The Heading 3 Style is used to format Section Titles which have slightly smaller font sizes and less spacing above and below them. Heading 3 styles always appear in our Table of Contents under the Chapter Titles and typically have a number in front of them such as 3.4 - meaning this is the beginning of the fourth section of the third chapter.

The Heading 4 Style is used to format Subject Titles. These are only slightly bigger in font size than the normal text. Subject Titles may not appear in the Table of Contents but may appear if we are using a detailed Table of Contents. There will typically be three Subjects per Section. If the Subject Titles appear in our Table of Contents, they should begin with a number such as 3.4.2 - meaning the beginning of the second subject in the fourth section of the third chapter.

In this book, we introduce a new concept called a Topic Title and style it with a custom paragraph style called Topic Title. Topic Titles may have the same font as our normal text but will be bold and have more spacing above the title. Topic titles differ from all other titles in that they will not appear in our Table of Contents. There are typically three or four topic titles per Subject.

Because they will not appear in our Table of Contents, Topic Titles do not need to begin with a number.

Below is a Table comparing these Heading Styles:

Here is how we will format these heading styles in new Section Template.

Note that while many articles on book formatting recommend creating your own custom style names, such as My Custom Heading Style or My Custom Paragraph Style, we think this is a bad idea because Ebook readers are typically set up to look for the default paragraph styles and the default heading styles.

Using custom style names simply confuses these readers and leads to unexpected results. You are far better off using and modifying the existing style names rather than creating your own. This is also true of websites where you want to modify the existing heading tags, called h1, h2, h3, rather than trying to create your own custom heading tags. Also, we do not recommend using font percentages as these can also lead to unexpected results in E readers. Percent means the percent of the default font size. For example, if the default font size is 12 point, then 130 % of 12 point is 15.6 point. Some E Readers may change the default font - leading the Heading style to become much bigger or smaller than you intended. We therefore recommend using the actual font sizes and this way the text is more likely to appear the way you intended.

Heading 1 Custom Paragraph Style
To change the font size in our headings from percent to points, click on the Font tab. Then delete the value show in the Size box and type in the value you want followed by pt:

Then click Apply and click on the Indents and Spacing Tab. Here is what our Heading 1 Spacing tab screen looks like after we have modified it in our Section Template.

Also lets change the font color to blue. By default, Heading 1 uses Text Body for the next style. Then click Apply and OK. Repeat these steps to change the properties of Heading 2, 3, and 4 to the values shown in the table above.

Here is our four heading styles after making these changes.

We next need to make our custom Topic Title Paragraph style. To do this, right click on the Text Body paragraph style and click New. It is important that all of our custom book styles be based on the Text Body Paragraph style rather than the Default Paragraph style. Click on the Organizer Tab and name the new style Topic Title. Make the next style Text Body so that after we click Enter, the paragraph style returned to the Text Body Style. Place the style in a category called HTML styles.

Then click on the Font tab and change the font to 14 bold. Then click on the Indents and Spacing Tab and change the spacing to 0.16 inches above and 0 inches below the paragraph.