Turabian Headings: Five Levels of Subheadings, With Examples

Subheadings are the labels inside the body of your paper that tell a reader what each section is about. They aren't the header at the top of the page, which holds only the page number. Short papers often need no subheadings at all. Longer ones use them to show the reader how the argument is built.

The five levels at a glance

Turabian doesn't require one exact heading style. It suggests the plan below, and the real rule is that each level looks different from the others and stays consistent through the paper. Where Turabian offers a choice of bold or italic, this course (and PERRLA) uses bold for Level 1 and italic for Level 3.

Headline-style capitals: capitalize the first and last words and every major word; short words like a, of, the, and in stay lowercase unless they come first. Sentence-style capitals: capitalize only the first word and proper nouns.

What the levels look like on a page

Here are Levels 1 and 2 on page 3 of the sample Bigfoot paper.

1. Level 1Your main sections. Centered and bold, on a line of its own.
2. Level 2A part of a Level 1 section. Centered, regular type. Two of them, because a section divided once is not divided.
3. SpacingA little more space above a subheading than below it.
4. No periodOnly a Level 5 heading ends with punctuation.

How to use subheadings so the structure holds

• Use two levels at most in a typical class paper. Levels 3 to 5 are for theses and long reports.
• Never use just one. If you divide a section, give it at least two subheadings at that level.
• Go in order. Level 2 lives inside a Level 1 section; Level 3 inside a Level 2. Don't skip a level.
• No end punctuation. Subheadings don't take a period, except Level 5, which runs into the text.
• Never end a page with a subheading. If one lands on the last line of a page, move it to the top of the next page so it stays with its text.
• Keep siblings parallel. If one Level 2 reads Why the Hair Samples Matter, its sibling might read What the Sightings Show.
• Short paper, few sections? Turabian also lets you mark a break with three spaced asterisks centered on their own line instead of a heading. Ask your instructor if you're unsure.

Common mistakes, and the fix for each

• Using APA's heading styles. APA's Level 2 is flush left and bold; Turabian's Level 2 is centered and plain. Don't mix them.
• A lonely subheading. One Level 2 under a Level 1 means the section wasn't really divided. Add a second or remove the first.
• Changing styles midway. If Level 1 is bold on page 3, it's bold on page 9 too.
• A period after a heading. Delete it (except Level 5).
• A heading at the bottom of a page. Push it to the next page.
• Mixing up the header and the headings. The header holds the page number. Headings live in the body.

How PERRLA handles headings

If you write in PERRLA, you choose the level and PERRLA does the rest: centered or flush left, bold, italic, or regular, the capitalization style, and the spacing around it.

It is the same panel everywhere: Text & Heading Style on the ribbon in PERRLA Online and on the PERRLA tab in Word, and Text & Headings in the PERRLA sidebar in Google Docs.

Related Turabian 101 lessons

• Body pages: where the text starts, the page number, and the footnotes.
• Structuring a Turabian paper: introduction, main points, conclusion, and transitions.
• The title page: the title a third of the way down, and the lines below it.
• Final checks and common mistakes: the last pass before you submit.
• All 18 lessons in Turabian 101