Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Team or higher, Knowledge Professional or higher |
| Access | Agent |
A callout marks something the reader must not miss. Used everywhere it marks nothing, so two per article is the limit.
Insert one
- Put the cursor where it goes.
- Click Article components in the toolbar and select Callout.
- It appears as an Info callout; change that in the Callout type field if it is something else, and write it short.
The same menu holds Accordion, Tabs, Code block, Table, Embed and HTML block. A callout is the right one when the reader has to notice something, not when a section merely needs folding away.
The four types and what they should mean
- Info. Context that is easy to miss and changes what the reader does.
- Warning. Something that goes wrong, or cannot be undone.
- Error. The narrower one: what the reader sees when it has already gone wrong.
- Tip. A better way, or an offer of help.
Agree what each means and use them consistently. Readers learn the pattern quickly, and inconsistency teaches them to skip all of them.
Two per article at most
A callout works because it stands out. An article with five is an article with none, and it reads as shouting.
If several things seem to need one, the article is probably covering too much and should be split.
Keep them short
Two or three sentences. A callout containing a paragraph is a paragraph in a box, and readers skip boxes that look like work.
The component allows more than that: text, block quotes, images, video, tables and horizontal lines all fit inside one. Being able to put a table in a callout is not a reason to. What makes it work is that it is shorter than everything around it.
Not for the main point
The most common misuse. If something is the answer, it belongs in the article, not in a box beside it. Callouts are for what surrounds the answer.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.