Recurring Page Furniture
A band that repeats on every page—decide per page or once?
✅ NormativeSettled. The requirement holds as written.📚 Document ruleNeeds other pages of the same document; decided once and applied on every page.Read §4.6 in the RFC ↗
Whether a margin band is page furniture MUST be decided once for the document. A band that is page furniture on one page MUST be page furniture — a Page-header or Page-footer, never body text and never a heading — on every page it appears on.
When it applies
The repeated strip at the top or bottom margin: an agency name, a running title, a brand mark, a document or exhibit stamp, a revision date, a folio. It carries no argument; it tells the reader which document the sheet belongs to.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES PRINTED: 03/18/2021 ← header band
CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES OMB NO. 0938-0391
… the page's actual content …
FORM CMS-2567 Previous Versions Obsolete Page 3 of 12 ← footer band
Reading the examples. Each one pairs a source page with the output the rule expects. ✅ Sample: the rule applies. ❌ Counter-sample: it looks like it applies and does not, or a rendering got it wrong. A non-conforming output, in red, is shown only for contrast. … marks content left out of an excerpt.
The point, in a small example
Both source pages belong to one document. Preserve the heading depth, classify repeated margin bands consistently, and keep each printed folio with its footer. Separate folio extraction is not requested in this example. These pages are made up to isolate the rule.
Document structure continues across pages
Two consecutive interior pages are shown in order. The document title is on an earlier cover; sections use level 2 and subsections level 3. The running header is plain text on both pages. The printed folios stay in their footer bands; they are not physical sheet indices.
Source page
Expected output
FIELD GUIDE
## 2 Maintenance
### 2.1 Inspection
Inspect daily.
Revision A · Page 4
---
FIELD GUIDE
### 2.2 Cleaning
Clean weekly.
Revision A · Page 5Decided from the document
The same string is easy to read as a title on the page where it is largest or first, and as furniture everywhere else. The decision MUST be made from several pages: a string that recurs in the same margin with the same wording is furniture on all of them, including the first.
A cover page is the one place a repeated string MAY also be the document title. The cover occurrence is then the Title and every later occurrence is furniture; the cover MUST NOT decide the rest of the document. Which sheet is the cover is decided in Document Type (§4.4).
A single page
Where only one page is available, a band in the top or bottom margin that carries no argument of its own — a running title, an agency name, a folio — is furniture. Where the only reason to call it furniture would be that it repeats on pages that are not available, it MUST be kept where the page prints it, in its printed position.
Never a heading
A running header MUST NOT be rendered as a heading. Promoted, it corrupts the outline twice over: it invents a section that does not exist, and it repeats that invented section on every page. A document whose outline is its own masthead repeated forty times has no usable structure left. This is the never invent failure — the page prints a margin band, not a section.
A heading that repeats on more than half the pages of a document is almost always furniture filed as structure.
Bands that contain a graphic
Bands that change partway through
Long documents revise their furniture — a new date, a new form number, a different layout after a section break. A change of wording does not make the band content. The same disposition MUST apply before and after the change, and each variant MUST be transcribed as it is printed.
Neighbouring rules, and how they differ
More
Rule id layout-recurring-page-furniture · rule layout