I have a website that contains a lot of short (150 word) descriptions of key concepts. The concepts are organised hierarchically so a description of Cheese will be a subsection under the heading "Milk products" etc.
The problem is that the concepts are generally written so that they are best read as a page with whole sequence of concept descriptions. It does not make as much sense to read just one individual description (they don't quite stand on their own). However, the sequence changes depending on the user (an expert cheesemaker will want to read about detailed descriptions of Epoisse, while a non-expert just needs to read some basics on cheese making).
What is the best way to choose the canonical pages for this?
If it is to put each individual description as the canonical page, how I can make subsections of the pages showing a sequence of descriptions have a canonical link to the pages showing just one description? As far as I know the canonical properterty works only for page header.
And is having each individual description as the canonical page really the best setup given that users will generally prefer sequences of descriptions?