Headings in OU Campus

OU Campus lets you set paragraph styles to create headings and define the structure of your page. This ensures your content is accessible to all users, including those using assistive technology, and also make your content easier to digest.

Don’t use headings to style text.

Headings are for showing the structure of your content, not for making your text look big or bold.

Making Content Stand Out

You are working with a set number of style choices in OU Campus. If you need to make part of your content stand out, try using:

You will only use headings 3 to 6.

The template you are working within when you manage your OU Campus content has pre-assigned content areas for headings 1 and 2. For that reason, you'll start with heading 3 as your main headings for your content, then add subheadings for each h3 in sequential order (h4, h5, h6) as needed. Be sure not to skip levels or go out of order.

Heading Style Guide

Communications offers more information about what to with headings that are full sentences, when to add extra space between headings, and more.

Toggle the "Show Content Blocks" button on.

You can catch heading issues by toggling on "Show Content Blocks" to show you each line's styling (paragraph, heading 3, etc).

Watch out for empty heading blocks.

If any blocks show a heading style where the line is empty, you will need to delete the empty line, or fix the empty heading by making sure it appears as an empty paragraph instead.

Fixing Empty Headings

Place your cursor after paragraph text or a heading and hit "Enter" for a full paragraph break or "Shift+Enter" for a smaller break (also called a soft return).

Watch out for snippets that automatically use specific headings.

Some OU Campus snippets automatically present information using particular heading sizes. You cannot change the heading sizes in these snippets. Instead, you will need to make sure that your content still follows a logical heading order by adding headings before the snippet.

Expand/Collapse Snippet

This snippet automatically presents items to be expanded or collapsed as heading size 5. Add a descriptive heading 4 before the snippet. That heading 4 will need a heading 3 before it as well.

Highlight Boxes

Begin highlight boxes with a heading 3, no matter where they are on the page.

Image Grids

These snippets automatically use heading 4 as the heading size. To preserve heading hierarchy, add a descriptive heading 3 before the simple list to introduce it.

Multipurpose Lists

These lists automatically use heading 4 as the heading size. To preserve heading hierarchy, add a descriptive heading 3 before the multipurpose list to introduce it.

News Feed

The news feed snippet automatically uses heading 4 for news story titles. Add a descriptive heading three before your news feed to maintain heading hierarchy.

Simple List Snippets

These snippets automatically use heading 4 as the heading size. To preserve heading hierarchy, add a descriptive heading 3 before the simple list to introduce it.

Digital Accessibility