I find that the most difficult part of being an editor is writing the headlines. Headlines play such an important part in establishing a reader's interest in a story. They must be concise and really display the context of the article.
Below are my reactions, as well as links, to some Web sites that are helpful in deciding what words you should keep, which ones you should omit and explain how to setup a basic foundation for a headline.
Headline Tips and Headline Writing for the Web
Headline tips is a basic list of around 19 or 20 concise tips on making your headline writing better. The tips cover everything from accuracy to the use of punctuation.
Something I found interesting about these tips was that the first tip was "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy". The final tip was "be accurate and specific". This displays how important it is to not deceive the reader with your headline and you should also make sure that there are no facts in your headline that are not in your article. Another way to avoid deceiving your reader is to not insinuate or use double meanings in your headlines.
The fact that headlines are around 10 words at most; it can be difficult at times to really get across the context of the article and be as concise as possible.
While reading the Headline Writing for the Web, I noticed that the same basic principles applied to writing headlines for the Web that apply writing them for the print medium. The main difference that I noticed was the importance of writing a good headline. On the internet, search engines such as Google use the words in the headline for their search and good headline could produce more visits to your Web site. Also, you have to take into consideration that your headline will be used as the display name for links on other sites. This makes good headline writing skills extra important.
For Further Reading:
Microcontent
This article went over the same basic principles that the previous Headline Writing for the Web article did. It once again reminded us that headlines on the internet are often listed in search engines and on other Web sites. Most of the time when headlines are listed they can be out of context, but even when they are in the correct context they could be listed with other similar headlines and this potentially makes it difficult for the reader to pick out your headline from the rest.
The rest of the article went on to explain microcontent. These guidelines were much like the tips listed in the Headline Tips article. This writer once again stressed accuracy and the use of plain language to entice the reader to continue reading.
I thought the most interest part of the site were the tips for writing effective e-mail subject lines. Just like writing headlines, you want e-mail subject lines to entice the reader and get him or her to open the e-mail and read it. This definitely something that everyone should take some time to look at.
For Further Reading:
