What writers and others say
“Every good title is a short story.”
— Russell Banks, American writer of fiction and poetry
“Don’t write a headline you wouldn’t say when talking to a friend. No one in history ever uttered, ‘Woodley, defense propel Dolphins past NY.’”
— James Barger, sports editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“The headline writer’s tool is not a hammer, but a chisel, the fine semantic chisel of exact language with exact meaning and exact dimension. The precise headline writer must learn to be fluid with solids. Into solid substance he pours liquid grace.”
— John B. Bremner, the late University of Kansas copyediting professor and author of Htk
“Heads are like poetry. Hell, they are poetry. You’re a poet. You choose words that tell and find a way to fit them into given limitations.”
— Roger Buddenberg, staff writer, Omaha World-Herald
“The headline writer is the poet among journalists, stuffing big meaning into small spaces.”
— Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar, The Poynter Institute, in Writing Tools
“Never write a headline that you can’t say out loud without sounding like a politician.”
— Steve Crescenzo, owner, Crescenzo Communications
“A story should be a verb, not a noun.”
— Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire and American Heritage
“No verbs, no vigor.”
— Editor’s Workshop newsletter editors
“Nouns are important, but the nouns must do something.”
— Pete Hamill, novelist, essayist and journalist
“The worst insult a headline writer can give a story is to be trite. That sin is bad enough in body type; in 48 point, the irredeemable qualities multiply to the 10th power. The bigger the type, the better the headline must be.”
— Jim Heinrich, copy editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Trying to explain what makes a headline good is like trying to explain what makes a joke funny or a photo pornographic — you recognize it, but you can’t necessarily explain it.”
— Jim Heinrich, Sunday Magazine copy editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on PoynterOnline
“If you can’t say your title in one breath, it’s probably too long.”
— Sam Horn, author of POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd
Headline writing “combines the mastery of Scrabble with the composition of haiku.”
— John Early McIntyre, ACES president and assistant managing editor for the copydesk at the Baltimore Sun
“Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent 80 cents of your dollar.”
— David Ogilvy, “the father of advertising,” in Ogilvy on Advertising
“I never write fewer than 16 headlines for a single ad.”
— David Ogilvy, “the father of advertising,” in Ogilvy on Advertising
“A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.”
— Walker Percy, author of Love in the Ruins
Good news headlines “need at least two things … a noun and a verb.”
— Mary Pretzer, design columnist, Editor’s Workshop newsletter
“Athletic verbs hint that yours is an organization where things are hopping. The geriatric verbs most of us use — announces, introduces, thanks — bespeak a sleepy firm and make for sleepy readers.”
— The Ragan Report editors
“Make sure the big type does not contradict the little type.”
— John Russial, associate professor at the University of Oregon
“I have a writer who has vaguely threatened violence if I ever use ‘mull’ in a headline on her city council stories again. I dunno, what else do city councils do?”
— Katje Sabin, associate editor, The Davis (Calif.) Enterprise, quoted in “Doc’s Headline Picks” on PoynterOnline
“Lose your reader with your headline and you’ve lost the reader altogether.”
— Alan Sharpe, business-to-business direct-mail copywriter
“Readers stayed away. Did your headline have a verb? I didn’t think so.”
— Chris Smith, senior training specialist, Entergy Corp.
“Writing headlines is a specialty — there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn’t write a headline to save their lives.”
— Bill Walsh, copy chief at The Washington Post
Get the word out with display copy
“Readers” don’t read. Even highly educated web visitors read fewer than 20% of the words on a webpage.
So how do you reach “readers” who won’t read your paragraphs?
Learn how to put your messages where your readers’ eyes really are — in links, lists and CTAs — at our display copy-writing workshop.
