Talk:Introduction to JP Boyd on Family Law

I would like to see a subsection in the introduction: How the information is organized. (Think about the print readers as well as online readers for this.)

This is as good a place as any to identify important organizational issues about headings and sections:

Cross-referencing right now lists the chapter heading (short form) plus the section. There are no links just to a section.

There are still major challenges:

1. Names of chapters. For some chapters, there is a short title (in the TOC that you can see on the right) and a longer title when you arrive at the destination. This creates uncertainty when you link internally (am I in the right place?) Ideally, both for online and print, the name of the chapter heading should be exactly as it appears in any direction to it. Otherwise readers will feeling anxious. Right now the readers are looking at the short title in the brief TOC on the right, but when the reader is being linked in the text the long title is used. I'm thinking maybe we should revise the "short title" approach (no doubt made to fit in the window) as the "long title" approach appears to be the one that embedded. It has to be consistent, not puzzling.

The Legal System is really about family law in particular, not the legal system as a whole. I don't think we can get round our problems by having short/long titles.

2. Chapters headings doubling as section headings. At the moment the chapter heading is also de facto the heading of the overview section. This is followed by "more detailed" sections. Logically this bothers me. It should be (a) heading; (b) section/section/section. And in the in-print TOC it will need to look like this.

The problem then becomes a style sheet one, where each section (aka page) starts with an (a) heading, even though subsequent sections are actually (b) section headings. In an online non-book format, I'd take a heading page, put in the intro, then line up the sections for folks to link to: overview section/more detailed section/more detailed section. (The heading for the overview section could just say "overview."

3. In-print use of the TOC. The chapters are not alphabetical. They don't right now have numbers (or not that I can see). Readers cannot be expected to form a map of the TOC in their heads. Online they can go over and check where to go, because all that is showing are the short titles (for now!) and it's visually manageable. A print TOC would need to include sections as well and will be quite long, I suspect. I think I'm recommending numbers (that old trick).

4. The links to sections are usually made to the long title, not the title you can see online on the right. This is ok-ish online but in print you'll probably have to use the long title of the section in the TOC . . .

5. Links to the forms have one name in the document and another in the TOC. (Same issue here as well.) The link is consistent when you get there, but when you're linking at the short TOC for the chapters (right-hand side) it's a bit different.

In law, a document demonstrating ownership of a thing. See "ownership."

In law, (1) a written argument, or (2) a memorandum of law. A brief is usually presented to a judge as a summary of an argument or the law on a particular issue. Curiously, briefs are rarely brief.