Re: plain text best practice?

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

scrawler@gmail.com wrote:

> howdy guys,
> 
> I want to use org-mode for writing documents that don't necessarily
> have very many headings or sub-headings.
> 
> I could do:
> 
> * Chapter One
>  lots of text
> * Chapter Two
> lots more text
> 
> or:
> 
> * Chapter One
>   - lots of text
> * Chapter Two
>   - lots more text
> 
> or:
> 
> * Chapter One
> ** paragraph 1
>    lots of text
> ** paragraph 2
>    lots of text
> * Chapter Two
> 
> ...but I'm not sure which to use. It almost seems like the last format
> is the best, but I don't want to type paragraph headings. Maybe the
> first few words of the paragraph could be a heading after the fact, but
> not as I write.
> 
> Apologies for such a basic question, but I how can I leverage org-mode
> to just write? What do you do?
> 

Use the first form. If you feel that the chapter needs to be split up,
use second level headings to split it up into sections. If a section
gets too big, use third-level headings for subsections. And so on...

Org-mode is not buying you much in this case: you can navigate easily
between chapters and you can hide the contents of all the other chapters
while leaving exposed the one you are working on. But it doesn't cost
anything either. And if you ever decide to publish the thing (on paper,
as a PDF on the web, as HTML on the web, etc.), you will be able to
trivially do it. So just write and don't sweat it too much.

Nick