Paragraphs must be able to stand apart from their subheading

[ReneeF]

I had an article (actually ten articles) accepted and approved for over a month and I voluntarily took it down to make changes to some long, but not run-on, sentences. The article(s) were rejected for issues that should have been noticed by editors the first approval time before I took them down. Most the problems are obvious or the editor has sent specific links to guidelines, which I am using to make future edits. However, this one article was sent back with the comment "Paragraphs must be able to stand apart from their subheadings." What does this mean? I find it confusing. The subheadings could be removed and the paragraphs still make grammatical sense, but removing them would remove the segue into the new topic. The article is a list article where each list item is subheaded with a number and a title to the list of subjects. If we remove the five subheadings, the paragraphs would not lead into each other in a nice flow. So, does the editor mean I need to create a segue sentence between sections so that the buyer could remove the subheadings and have the article make sense? The article is 1300 words long and would be an enormous chore to read without proper subheadings. The article cannot be broken into five articles because it is a list of career options for a particular career path. (And yes, I know this paragraph isnt perfectly grammatically correct or punctuated, please go easy on me, I have two very excited 10yo's begging me to stop working to play games with them.) Thank you to whomever takes the time to help, you will be an article saver, I spend entire days on each article, sometimes more than two or three days. I hope to repay or pay-forward the favor someday.

[Isabelnewth]

Hallo, It's hard to guess without seeing an article extract. It's only a guess but I've had a rejection in the past because I didn't explicitly re-state the sub-heading in the body of the para. Something like:

'How does X work?

The things acts on the other thing and then it all goes round.'

So the content refers back to the sub-heading but doesn't re-state it. I think they prefer:

'How does X work?

X works by the thing acting on the other thing etc'

Could that be it or part of it? I am struggling with expressing myself this morning, so I hope that makes sense.

For some reason your question has only just appeared, so hopefully you will get other suggestions. All the best.

[ReneeF]

Hallo, It's hard to guess without seeing an article extract. It's only a guess but I've had a rejection in the past because I didn't explicitly re-state the sub-heading in the body of the para. Something like:

'How does X work?

The things acts on the other thing and then it all goes round.'

So the content refers back to the sub-heading but doesn't re-state it. I think they prefer:

'How does X work?

X works by the thing acting on the other thing etc'

Could that be it or part of it? I am struggling with expressing myself this morning, so I hope that makes sense.

For some reason your question has only just appeared, so hopefully you will get other suggestions. All the best.

That makes sense, and it is initially what I checked for. But since the subject is restated in a different way within the first sentence of each section, I assumed they read at least that far to determine that was not the issue. Maybe I simply need to rewrite the first sentence to repeat the subtitle exactly. Which is what the article was like the first go around when it was approved before the editor had me remove that and reword it because it sounded "redundant." So, maybe this editor wants me to put it back in, to repeat the title exactly, like it was before. Instead of reintroducing the subject at the end of the first sentence in different words to avoid the redundancy.

[Isabelnewth]

That sounds very annoying, but it's possible. There's a bit of an assumption that internet readers need patient spoon-feeding. Let us know what happens.