Sections
Sections organize a document into structural parts such as introductions, methods, results, discussions, appendices, headers, and footers.
Stencila supports both generic sections and recognized named section types.
Generic sections
Use ::: section to create an explicit section container:
::: section
# A section heading
Section content.
:::
A section heading
Section content.
Explicit sections are useful when you want a structural container in the document model, rather than relying only on heading levels.
Nested sections
Sections can be nested inside one another:
::: section
# Nested sections
::: section
## Inner section
::: section
### First inner-inner section
This is the first inner-inner section
:::
::: section
### Second inner-inner section
This is the second inner-inner section
:::
:::
:::
Nested sections
Inner section
First inner-inner section
This is the first inner-inner section
Second inner-inner section
This is the second inner-inner section
Recognized section types
Stencila recognizes many common document section types and maps them to a structured sectionType value. These types are based largely on section categories used in scholarly and technical documents.
For example:
::: header
This is the header
:::
::: introduction
This is the introduction
:::
::: discussion
This is the discussion
:::
::: footer
This is the footer
:::
The examples above are recognized as typed sections rather than just generic containers.
Common section types
Some of the section types Stencila recognizes include:
abstract
summary
highlights
introduction
background
related-work
materials
methods
experimental-design
statistical-analysis
results
discussion
limitations
conclusions
future-work
references
acknowledgements
funding
competing-interests
ethics
author-contributions
data-availability
code-availability
reproducibility
abbreviations
nomenclature
supplementary-materials
appendix
main
header
footer
These recognized section types help preserve document structure across formats and make documents more semantically explicit.
Headings and sections
Headings and sections are related but not identical:
a heading is a title line such as # Introduction
a section is a structural container that can contain headings and other content
Many documents use both together, for example an ::: introduction section containing an # Introduction heading.
Appendix breaks
Use ::: appendix to mark the transition into appendices:
Unlike ::: section, ::: appendix is a break marker rather than a container, so it does not need a closing :::.
A paragraph before first appendix break.
::: appendix
A paragraph after first appendix break.
A paragraph before first appendix break.
A paragraph after first appendix break.
Appendix breaks are useful when a document transitions from the main text into appendix material.
Tip
If you are trying to add titles, authors, dates, keywords, or other article-level properties, see Metadata.
Appendix A Related guides
For related authoring features, see:
Appendix B Schema types
For the formal Stencila Schema definitions behind these features, see:
