 <p>First one is an example of a nested state which fulfills your requirement for inheriting the scope object. e.g state/sub-state-a, state/sub-state-b The comment above the first snippet you took from the doc reads:</p> <blockquote> <p>Shows prepended url, inserted template, paired controller, and inherited $scope object.</p> </blockquote> <p>The second example is a nested view where you can define multiple views per state and use each depending on your use-case. From the docs:</p> <blockquote> <p>Then each view in views can set up its own templates (template, templateUrl, templateProvider), controllers (controller, controllerProvider).</p> </blockquote>