Part of this week’s headline assignment was to revise two of our own headlines from our blogs. Picking the bad headlines I wrote wasn’t hard, but I did find it challenging to revise them. I knew what I hated about my headlines, but it was difficult to figure out what was the best way to fix them.
The Canadian Press Stylebook provides a lot of useful information when writing a headline, but it can also be very daunting. The Stylebook says to be specific; give enough information about the story but don’t give it all away; use strong verbs, and the list goes on. But as I struggled to revise my headlines I tried to keep all these “rules” in mind, and come up with headlines I would find interesting but that a larger audience would also understand.
After working on this assignment, I realized how very important headlines are in the editing process. Not only does it sum up the basis of the story, but it also gets people interested in the story and the newspaper, website, journal or whatever as a whole. A headline is what sells, and if the headline editor doesn’t get it right people won’t be interested in reading what the publication has to say.
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