Talk:Introduction to JP Boyd on Family Law

I have written a brief introduction. Also added a sentence or two to the existing copy in the following paragraph. I focus on JP rather than on the "team" because the great strength of this material is the feeling you get of an individual voice. See what you think.

A few 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. It has to be consistent, not puzzling. (I don't care if long or short titles are used, but only one title would be a grand idea.)

2. Chapters headings doubling as section headings.

I strongly recommend adding a sub-heading, Overview, to the start of each chapter (following the chapter's introduction). This is not entirely consistent, but it's a compromise. We would need to do a work-around on this in terms of the style sheet, and an auto-generated TOC for the PDF.

Here is my thinking about this:

In the copy I'm editing, 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 TOC. We are having a nice numbered manual, right?

4. The links to sections (and to forms) are different from the sections you can see on the short TOC.

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.

In law, something that is relevant or important. A material fact, for example, is a fact relevant to a claim or a defence to a claim. See "claim," "evidence" and "fact."

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