![]() This can be particularly true for sports stories but are equally applicable to any field where a bit of descriptive variation can elevate a headline. This online thesaurus offers up shorter synonyms for headlines, should the need arise.Ĭopywriters everywhere will recognise the mantra to "let the verbs do the work" a good verb can transform the meaning of a sentence and bring it to life. There is a little more leeway online than the stringent, physical restrictions of print headlines, but it always helps to keep things short. Nielsen recommends visiting "the site daily for a week and try to apply some of the BBC editors' discipline to your own headlines". Headlines across the news section of the website average out at six words each, seeing through the finer details of a story to deliver its core to the reader. Nielsen puts the BBC's experience in radio and Ceefax as the main cause for their journalists' consistently accurate brevity. The BBC is often credited with having consistently tight headlines, as Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the user-experience research company the Nielsen Norman Group, explains in this blog post. but read through, check it still makes sense! #weblines That's the keep it tight, fit for a quick reader scan, cut out - is, has, etc. This should be a given considering what we are trying to achieve, but it can be difficult to get across a complex idea in a few, key words. And always make 100 per cent sure the spelling is correct. This guide from Allan Metcalf of the Chronicle of higher Education covers the bases. Numbers are important, as we will discuss later, but a figure is quicker to read than a word in a headline. Here at .uk (and elsewhere) we write numbers as figures, not words. With that in mind, auxiliary verbs and articles can often be cut out and many words can be replaced with punctuation – a comma instead of 'and', a colon instead of 'said' – to make the headline tighter or more active.Īlso: single quote marks for quotes in a headline and only capitalise the first word or after a colon. Grammar can take a bit of a back seat in headlines the aim here is to quickly convey the key information in the article while giving the reader a reason to read on. Here are some guidelines for headline writing – both on the web and in print – but if you have more tips and pointers to share then feel free to do so in the comments. ![]() Choose around ten words from over a million to accurately, succinctly and attractively portray a story. ![]() Headline writing has always been an elusive art and the nature of the web and social media in particular – in that the headline is not necessarily contextualised by surrounding stories or images, as in print – has changed the game. ![]()
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