A subheading is a small title inside a longer piece of writing that tells you what the next part is about. The big title at the top is the heading; the little ones that break up the body are the subheadings. You see them everywhere — in textbooks, news articles, reports, instruction manuals, and on websites, where they are often in bold or a slightly bigger type so your eye can find them. Their real job is not decoration. A reader who does not want the whole thing scans the subheadings and jumps to the part they need, so a good subheading is short, plain, and honest about what follows. Two things worth knowing. First, in newspapers a line under the main headline that gives a bit more detail is also called a subheading (or a 'subhead', or a 'standfirst' in British papers) — so the word covers both 'a title for a section' and 'the second line under the big headline'. Second, people also spell it 'sub-heading', and both spellings are common and correct.

小標題、次標題