Headlines are becoming increasingly important in the internet age. Not only do they capture the reader's attention, they serve as source material for search engines. Today a reader is just as likely to come across an article by reading a list of search engine results as by scanning a newspaper page.
Headlines should be clear and specific, telling the reader what the story is about, and be interesting enough to draw them into reading the article.
- 5-10 words at the most
- should be accurate and specific
- City Council to Cut Taxes doesn't mean the same thing as City Council to Cut Budget
- Use present tense and active verbs, but don't start with a verb
- Man Skateboards for Homeless
- Use infinitive form of verb for future actions
- Convention to Create Jobs
- Do not use articles - a, an, the
- Do not use conjunctions like and - you can substitute a comma
- President Declares Peace, Holiday
- Should be complete sentences or imply complete sentence
- Crackdown on Trafficking doesn't tell you who's doing the trafficking and what kind of trafficking
- Avoid repetition - Headlines summarize; they don't repeat the lede.
- Rays Win - not Rays Win Final Game of Playoffs
- Don't use unidentified pronouns
- Avoid clever for clever's sake
- Rays Flip-Flop On St. Petersburg
