The point of an outline is to lay out your ideas and brainstorm. Naturally, as you work on your outline, some ideas will become more or less important. As this happens, you will want to promote or demote your headings. If you demote a heading, its subheadings will be affected as well. For example, let’s say you demote Level 1 text to Level 2. Any Level 2 text in that section will be demoted to Level 3; any Level 3 text will be demoted to Level 4, and so on.

 

You can promote or demote text in one of three ways:

-          Place your cursor at the beginning of the line and press Tab to promote it or Shift+Tab to demote it.

-          Expand the section you want to change. Then, place your cursor in the first line and use the Promote/Demote arrows ( to promote and  to demote) on the Outlining toolbar. You can also use the double left arrow () to promote text all the way to Level 1, or the double right arrow () to demote text all the way to body text.

-          Expand the section you want to promote or demote, and then choose the new level from the Level Menu ().

 

In the sample above, the line Telephone Techniques should be the only Level 1 item in the document. The rest of them should actually be Level 2. Let’s demote our sections accordingly.

 

 

Now that we look at it, Progress Reports and Proper Return to the Line should probably be in the section Putting People on Hold. Let’s demote those two items one level further.

 

 

You can see how easy it is to promote or demote headings as they change importance in your document.