Love this clear explanation from Martin Underhill of what headers, headings and titles are, and why they are very much not the same.

This resonates:

Three particular terms I often hear being used interchangeably are ‘header’, ‘heading’, and ‘title’; I even catch myself doing it sometimes! Let’s have a look how they can be confused.

And this seems pretty sensible:

What a designer calls something should not differ from what a developer calls it, and the easiest way to ensure this consistency is to use the terminology defined by the super smart people who wrote HTML and ARIA.

If you work in content that lives on the internet, I think you should know the differences and be able to explain them.

Basically:

  • header – usually a banner area where a logo, strapline and navigation lives
  • title – search-friendly metadata that describes the page and appears in the browser, not the page itself
  • headings – the h1, h2, h3 content that helps structure a page and provides an outline of your content

If you're reading this and thinking, "Hmm, still not sure," then I highly recommend you go check out Underhill's post. It includes much more detailed definitions and useful examples to help you out.