What's in a headline

Headlines are important, nay, they are crucial to allow you to want to read, or just go to the next article, or page.

You have to be careful when you are forming the headline and say to yourself: "Will it grab, or will readers skip over." It's an easy choice between excitement and color versus bore, dullness and the mundane.

A headline has to have punch, and make people curious, inquisitive, interested. If it doesn't have none of these elements, then many will sure skip over and look for another interesting article.

And how will they know that? By the headline. So we come back to the old story. It is the headline, the headline and the headline someone inside your head should scream. It should make people interested, excited, full of buzzing energy, and even jumping up and down in their boots to read and ponder.

Professional journalists and newspapers take a great deal of time in choosing their headlines, and that should go for every single article. Because it is these precious headlines that sell newspapers and make article read.

Unfortunately quite a lot of writers over look this fact. They are busy getting the article right, that they don't really bother about the headline.

In the end they just put some kind of a long, windy headline that sounds more like a sentence, or even a paragraph, well a small paragraph! I see it lots of times. They, miss the whole point of a headline.

That can be great pity because readers will immediately pepper over, maroon their eyes, maybe have a yawn at what can be a perfectly good story, if it's given the chance to be read, and just go to the next "interesting" headline.

I know many people would say headlines are a drag. They are excited about finishing the article and can't be bothered to walk that extra mile, or one meter I should say, of putting a decent, grabbing banner that should surely tickle the reader from the bottom upwards.

It's really simple. Headlines should be chosen at the end when all the writing is over, when you, the writer is fully consumed with what you have just said, and the words just roll off the page, inside your mouth, unto your tongue and roll back on the paper or the screen.

Frequently as well, you can pick the headline from the body of the article, interesting phrasing, sentences, and paragraphs that stand out. A couple of words, may be three or four active ones that will make the ears perk up, and the person at the opposite end listen.

In one newspaper around the world whom I will not mention, and a daily that sells at least few million, a whole committee exists to choose the headlines, studying, glossing over, pondering, deep in thought over the choice, headlines that grab and titillate, maybe just one word or two to inspire, give innate excitement and possibly psychologically pander to prejudices.

Although ulterior motives may well exist, apart from keeping the readers happy which go up to 2 or 3 million per day, and are a big sell market, headlines are important, crucial to get readers interested in your article regardless of the corporate potential that is involved.