Writing headlines

Headline writing is an art that has become even more important in the digital age, when these 6–10 words are all that stands between you and clicking on a story link. Journalism has limited value if nobody sees it, and your headline is often all people have to go on when deciding to read, watch or listen.

So here’s some tips for good headline writing. I offer these as a counterpoint to clickbait headlines, which as far as I can tell are universally viewed as somewhere between annoying and despicable. Our goals for headline writing are to provide enough information about a story that people can decide whether to spend their time on it, and to do this in as few words as possible, without overselling or underselling the story itself.

1. Spoil the story. This is not a teaser. This is not a mystery novel. Lay out precisely what the story has to offer. The thing about clickbait that everyone finds so annoying is that it withholds information, saying things like, “try this one simple trick,” or, “you won’t believe what he said next.” The word “this” and other pronouns are a hallmark of clickbait headlines, and their purpose is to obscure the true object of the story. Thus whether you click or not is based on whether the headline was successful in plying your curiosity, rather than on the relevance of the information itself. (This has the short-term benefit of potentially drawing in people who are not actually interested in your story. But think of how you feel when you’ve been duped into spending time on something irrelevant, and decide whether that’s the experience you want someone to have with your story.)
2. Subject — verb — object. As a general rule, this is a good starting point for headlines. Ask yourself, who or what is the main actor in the story? Put this noun as the first word or words in your headline. Then, ask yourself what this main actor is doing or has done. This should be the second word in your headline, and it should be a strong verb in active voice. The third part is a bit squishier, but it should focus on another noun that receives the action being done (Congress passes asylum law), or it might mention consequences or results of the action (Asylum law passes, opening gates for refugees) or adding some bit of context (Asylum law passes in midnight vote).
   Again, S-V-O is a general rule that will serve you well in most headlines. Variations on this theme include: a. putting the bit of context before the subject using a comma (In midnight vote, Congress passes asylum law), a favorite move of NYT headline writers; b. using a colon for attribution or to make connections (Congress: Refugees welcome under new asylum law); c. using a partial quote, often as an adjective or adverb (Congress passes ‘landmark’ asylum law). Other forms, such as the question headline or the explainer headline (What the new asylum law means for refugees) should be used with care, usually as a secondary story or on enterprise pieces.
3. Be efficient. The goal is to convey your message in as few words as possible. I see a lot of headlines written in two sentences now (Congress finally passed an asylum law. Now Republicans are fuming.), but this can often be done more efficiently in one following S-V-O style (Republicans fuming over asylum law). One of the few places that seems to consider how headlines look online is the New York Times. Look at the headlines in the left-hand bar and see how almost all the white space allotted to the headline is used up — the lines are even, no bad breaks, etc. They sometimes even use different headlines on the front page than on the story page. This is in service of headline efficiency on the front page, where people are scanning for something relevant to them.
4. Be clear and correct. The headlines I’ve messed up, the ones I’ve had to write corrections for, all happened when I was trying too hard to summarize or characterize what’s happening in the story. It’s good to break out the dictionary or thesaurus to find just the right word as a matter of efficiency, but often its better to use a word already present in the story. At the same time, leaving out words can sometimes lead to confusion in headlines, so make sure what you have reads well.
5. Don’t oversell or undersell. You want the headline to match exactly what’s in the story. One of readers’ most commonly stated complaints is misleading headlines, so you want your headline to accurately and proportionally reflect what’s in the story. This is easiest to do if you’re following the S-V-O headline style.

To help you practice these techniques, I suggest the following exercise.

1. Write a full-sentence summary of the story, as if it were a headline. In a spot news piece, this may be exactly the lead.
2. Cut it down to 15 words, making sure to place the subject first and verb second.
3. Write a second version of the headline, also about 15 words, and decide which version is better.
4. Write two shorter versions of the best headline to help you focus in: a 10-word version and a 5- or 6-word version. Forcing yourself to work within these constraints will help you find efficiencies, even if you end up with a 12-word headline in the end.