How to decide What should be chosen to make heading bold <strong> or <h3/h4/h5>?

Question

How to judge what should be <h2> , h3 h4 h5 h6 or <p><strong>Some text</strong></p> If we don't have knowledge about context

Only title of the page i can judge easily <h1>

How to judge others I always get content from clients in MS word 2007 format and client always use fontsize to make things smaller and bigger.

How we can best judge where client want Headings level and where he used bold text only for styling and where He really want to give emphasize on text.

<p><strong>Some text here</strong></p>
<p>Some more text here Some more text hereSome more text here
   Some more text hereSome more text here Some more text here
</p>

Or any heading level

<H*>Enquiries to:</h*>
<p>Some more text here Some more text hereSome more text here
   Some more text hereSome more text here Some more text here
</p>

Which would be good for accessibility?

Answer 1

Heading are what their name suggests, they should be used for headings or titles. Heading make them bold as well as different sizes based on their level. For other piece of text, you have to decide whether you want to make it bold or not.

Also, heading tags are good for search-engine-optimization, the SEOs usually put the page titles or important keywords inside these heading tags.

If you simply want something to appear bold, use the <strong> tags instead.

What i would suggest you is:

You should use headings for the titles or important keywords for the SEO purpose and you should use the other bold type tags such as b or strong at your own will when you want to make something appear bold.

Example:

<H2>Amazing Laptops</h2>
<p>
  We deal in great <strong>quality laptops</strong> you will ever come across.
</p>

Bottom Line:

There is a world of difference between bold type tags such as strong and heading tags. They serve the different purpose, you can not compare them.

Answer 2

Unfortunately there is no definitive formula for whether some piece of text should be a heading or not. If you don't understand what your client is looking for, I suggest you ask the client. We have even less idea since we haven't seen the data.

Answer 3

If the "some text here" sums up the section(s) or paragraph(s) that come directly after it, then it can be considered a header. Otherwise, it's just another piece of text.

Another good rule of thumb is that headers should not contain colons. So:

<h1>Inquiries</h1>
<p>Please send your inquiries to blabla.</p>

But:

<p><strong>Send your inquiries to:</strong><br />
blabla</p>

Answer 4

It's pretty common anymore to actually just use the header tags as placeholders really, and define adjust the design via CSS. Also

I think as far as you're question, you kind of just use them as they are in a hierarchical order based on what you can assume. Like you said page header would make sense to use <h1>, section header maybe <h2> and so on, and as adjustments need to be made just alter they're font size with CSS.

.content_area h1{font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;}
.content_area h2{font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;}

etc...

Answer 5

I would say don't worry about the formatting to decide which heading to use, you can always adjust the look with CSS.

My rule of thumb is to think of what you would want to see in a well organized and hierarchical table of content. If you would want the text in it then use a H[123456] tag. Then the more prominent use closer to H1, less prominent use closer to H6. Use the same Hn for things that are at the same level of importance.

It does not matter if you don't have a TOC in the end, but that will help you think how to organize your headings.