Mich
I tried several books (AP Press, Chicago Style etc.), web pages such as Askjeeves and came up with....NOTHING.

Sorry I cannot help you, but at least you know someone tried!

Thanks KatyC,
I thought that they might be commonly used editorial acronyms and was feeling a little dopey for not knowing what they meant when recently reading a syllabus.

Not that I am an experienced writer or anything closely related, but I thought I could use some common sense and when that didn't work , I thought I would try here.

Thanks for the help anyway.

I wish I could say that I feel less stupid, but I don't .
: ~ )

Michelle

Perhaps they are not acronyms Michelle, could they be abbreviations or shorthand?
Perhaps the AHED (authors head) needs to to get into the PHED (publishers head) so that you can have a ride in the PSUB (publishers subaru) and then you can get a hed (ahead).
I hope this has been helpful.

The publishers I work with use "A head" to indicate a main heading--the first level below a chapter title--and "B head" for the next level of subhead. For heads below a B head, we use short phrases usually set in either bold or italic type, indented by a tab space, and followed by a period, a space, and then the text. In 15 years of editing, I've never run across PHED or PSUB. A "page heading" would usually be called a "header" (the repeating phrase that often appears in small type at the top of the page to help the reader remember what chapter or section they're in). You certainly wouldn't need a subhead for that, though.

Please let us know if you find out what they mean!

Nan

Well it's a darn good thing Katey found nothing. I don't feel so inadequate when i came up empty as well....

Poppa

There's no such thing as "industry standard" in publishing.
Every publisher, magazine, newspaper etc. has different, sometimes conflicting, names for things. Makes for some totally ridiculous conversations ...

The only one I recognize is hed -- standard for headline.

They might even be a little "bug" the computer spits out as a space holder for a command -- not ever intended to mean anything to humans.

So it's not you, it's THEM!

In many years in newspapers I never came across any of these ... but that was before some of the pagination computers entered the workplace. They most likely refer to headlines and their placement. BUT, that said, they could be anything as every newspaper has a different internal language.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rural Life 2.0

PSUB = Purdue Student Union Board

AHED = American Higher Education

PHED usually refers to sports activities (Physical Education)

Syllabus seems to be the key here.