Centered headlines dominated newspapers for decades, but that changed in the ’70s, when the more experimental newspapers began to abandon them for flush left headlines.
Suddenly, newspapers would use the left-hand side of the page to align not only headlines, but other elements like bylines, summary paragraphs, quotes, and captions under photos.
One of the first newspapers to do this was the now defunct Chicago Daily News. The style was also adopted by the Minneapolis Tribune when, in 1971, it also switched to an all-Helvetica approach.
Since then, newspapers have opted mostly for flush left headlines, especially in the United States, where centered heads are rare in any newspaper today.
However, take a quick trip across the Atlantic and you’ll find that such classic newspapers as The Times of London continue to use centered heads, a style followed by many other European newspapers, as well as dailies in Asia and South America.
Comments about headline alignment aren’t based only on personal preference. How one aligns headlines does have an overall effect on the look of the page. How so?
- Centered headlines give a page a more classic and traditional look; flush left headlines are more modern, and invite a bit more white space into the page.
- Flush left headlines must be followed by a flush left alignment for all other elements that follow it, while centered heads can very well be accompanied by bylines and other elements which are aligned to the left. This is an important difference to consider when making choices.
- Tabloids fare much better with flush left headlines, while broadsheets can use either style.
- Consistency is important: either all heads centered, or all heads flushed left. However, some papers with centered headlines, such as The Times of London, do offer a bit of contrast by making their brief headlines flush left. This is better when there is also a font switch, from serif for centered heads to sans serif for flushed left heads.
At the end of the day, the wording of the headline — the message transmitted, the hook to get the reader to read the text — is far more important than the alignment.
All or a portion of this column was originally published in the IFRA newsletter.
