How many h1 tags on a webpage?

Monday, December 19, 2005

Back to headings again, the port80 poll raised an interesting side issue; Should there be only one h1 level heading on a web page? A lot of people see a web page as a single hierarchy, sort of like a pyramid, and feel there should be only one h1 level heading to indicate the topic of the page.

I'd not considered this before, but I'm not sure that I agree. Currently the only authority we have on the subject seems to not be too concerned about the number of hierarchies on a page only that they are well formed. The HTML validation service outline generator does not complain when it finds more than one h1 but it does complain when a level is missing, for example if it finds a h3 but n corresponding h2. The heading section on the HTML 4.01 spec does not mention any limitation on the number of h1 level headings, but only talks about 'sections' beginning with a h1 level heading. In the notes it also mentions:

"Some people consider skipping heading levels to be bad practice. They accept H1 H2 H1 while they do not accept H1 H3 H1 since the heading level H2 is skipped."

–W3C standards document notes

So, because they don't specifically rule it out, I think that the standards would suggest multiple h1 level headings are fine as long as well formed hierarchies are maintained. Of course the merits of that opinion can be debated till the cows come home to roost!

Random outings from a chaotic mind