In HTML5, is it better to use <section> and <h1> instead of <h2>–<h6>?

Question

In studying up on HTML5's new section tag, I'm wondering about the handling of h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags...

The HTML5 specification says that "[h1, h2, etc.] elements represent headings for their sections" (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/sections.html#the-h1-h2-h3-h4-h5-and-h6-elements). Further in the spec's "4.4.11 Headings and sections" section, there are currently three examples of structuring a document about apples.

If we follow the first specification, which states that heading elements "should represent headings for their sections," it seems the third apple example is the most correct structure (i.e., using h1 tags for the heading in each section and subsection). Using this logic it seems that the h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags would be used rarely, if at all.

This is what I'm wondering: should h2, h3, h4, h5, or h6 tags really be used if, in reality, they are basically marking up subsections? Does it not make more sense to use section tags to separate sections, each with their own header, rather than relying on h2, h3, etc. to start implicit sections? (The "Headers and sections" section also talks about the sections implied by using h2, h3, etc.)

Perhaps it's my relational database knowledge causing a bias, but creating multiple header tags with numbers (h 1, h 2, h 3) seems like bad practice, when technically they are each heading their own section or subsection.

What are your thoughts?

Answer 1

It seems that the spec even states that h1 has preference over all the others:

Sections may contain headings of any rank, but authors are strongly encouraged to either use only h1 elements, or to use elements of the appropriate rank for the section's nesting level.

What disturbs me however is this:

Authors are also encouraged to explicitly wrap sections in elements of sectioning content, instead of relying on the implicit sections generated by having multiple headings in one element of sectioning content.

Now it is wonderful that we got section, article, nav and aside to use to prevent div-itis. But if we need to explicitly use a section element for each section than we end up with more section elements then we ever had divs. I feel a strong case of section-itis coming on.