Content Outline Generator
Reduce a draft to its headings with the length of each section, so the structure can be judged on its own.
About this tool
Strips a draft down to its headings and reports how long each section is, so the shape of the piece can be read without reading the piece.
A long article is hard to judge from inside it. As an outline with word counts, the problems are obvious in seconds: **the section that has swallowed half the article**, **the heading with two sentences under it**, and **three headings in a row with nothing between them**. None of those is visible while reading, and all three are structural faults a reader feels without being able to name.
Markdown headings and HTML heading tags are both understood, so this works on a draft, a CMS export, or a page pasted from the browser.
Skipped heading levels are reported too — an h2 followed by an h4 is a subsection of something that was never announced, which matters to anybody navigating by heading.
Common questions
How long should a section be?
Long enough to say something and short enough to scan — usually 100 to 400 words. Under about 40 the heading is doing more work than the text under it; over about 600 the section is probably two.
Why does section length matter?
Because most readers scan headings first and read one section. A section that runs to a thousand words is one nobody finishes, and the point buried in the middle of it is read by very few.
Should every heading have text under it?
Yes. Two headings in a row is a structural gap — the first announces something and delivers nothing. Either add an introduction or the first heading is not needed.
Does heading structure affect rankings?
Weakly and indirectly. It affects whether the page is scannable, which affects whether people read it, which affects everything downstream. It matters more for anybody navigating by heading, for whom it is the only structure there is.