A great headline for the Web? It’s direct, to-the-point and easily found by search engines because it has lots of specific words, names and local references that news aggregators will find.
If the story is about the dangers of salmonella in tomatoes in California, by golly, the headline probably needs to have “California,” “bacteria” and “tomatoes” in it. Maybe “salmonella,” too.
Specificity is the key to writing headlines online because the words have to work on their own in the searchable, digital environment.
And writing headlines for print? Has that art been lost in the race to the Web? Hardly. Thousands of headlines are written for print each day in U.S. newspapers alone — the best ones capturing a reader’s imagination and attention in just a few words. The print environment is more poetic.
Here’s a bit of praise for the ongoing craft of writing for print, where the subtlety and nuance of a headline has a long and happy marriage to the context of the surrounding page.
In this video interview, Chris Wienandt, president of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES), talks about a few of his favorite headlines and how you can create poetry with just a few words.
His basic advice? “Don’t worry about the head count,” Wienandt said. “Always ask yourself, ‘What is this story really about?’ Find the nut graph and begin to craft it in headline-ese. Then focus on making it more and more succinct.”
“Think of powerful verbs, powerful nouns, powerful adjectives that will make the headline a memorable one in the brief moment that the reader will see it.”
Note: If you’re receiving this via e-mail newsletter and have trouble viewing the video, please use the video player on the Poynter Online article.
