Writing good headlines & cutlines
Good headlines:
1. Summarize the content of the story
2. Entice the reader into reading the story
3. Use a strong, active verb in every headline
4. Anchor the story design to help visually organize the page
Bad headlines:
1. Miss the point of the story
2. Confuse the reader, making them skip the story
3. Disturb the design of the page
Note: Headline writers must remember that the reader hasn’t read the story yet
Sly references to story content won’t work. If you’re stuck for a headline, always ask yourself this question: “What is the thing this story wants the reader to know?”
Make that one thing the headline. It’s a sure way to arrest attention, and even if someone just scans the headline and skips the story, at least you’ve communicated something along the way.
Too often, headline writing is the last stage of production. While actually sizing the headlines often must come last, there’s no reason not to get ideas in advance.
Be creative. A paper full of dull headlines looks like a paper full of dull stories. While not every story suits irreverence, and too much of a good thing is, well, too much, headlines should have some sparkle or punch.
Sometimes being imaginative can also land you in court. Headlines can be libel just like all other copy in the paper.
Headline writers should read their stories carefully, with their brains switched on. A fair and balanced story with a libelous headline can still land you in court.
As a headline writer, you are also expected to be a walking thesaurus. Not only do you have to find synonyms, but synonyms that will fit in the allotted space for a headline. Try exercises on yourself or with a fellow staffer. Can you come up with five synonyms for the word “inaugurate”? How about “prohibit”?
Or try “word association football”—bat words back and forth with a partner, using puns, double meanings and cognitive associations to form the chains. Go as fast as possible. (For example, “Black,” “White,” “Hat,” “Cowboy,” “Horse,” “Throat,” “Deep,” “Sea,” “Cement Galoshes,” “Hoffa,” “Half A Loaf,” “Better Than None,” “Priest”...) These games are a good warm-up to actual headline writing.
Cutlines
Cutlines are similar to headlines in methodology, but the stakes, like the type, are a little smaller. You’ll have to be aggressively stupid to draw attention to a bad cutline. On the other hand, you’ll have to be a bit more clever to make a cutline do its job.
Cutlines (the little bold legends which hover beneath photographs and, sometimes, graphics) should be judged on either information value or wit. The ideal cutline will have both. It will:
• Identify the photo and give it a context, either by naming the people, pinpointing the locale or clarifying the situation;
• Tell the reader something she doesn’t know, especially something the story doesn’t tell her;
• Motivate the reader to read the accompanying story
• Reinforce the angle and tone of the story with its wording
Cutlines can suffer from the same faults as headlines, by being awkward, confusing or pointless.
Here are a few tricks for generating better cutlines:
• If you have a great photo and a lousy story, or no time to write one, it can be effective to box the photo and cutline together, and use the cutline as a news brief.
• Get photographers to include cutlines with their prints.
• Pull a line from the story, or one that didn’t fit into the story, and put it under a picture that illustrates it or contrasts with it. With a headshot or portrait, use a quote from the person pictured.
• Brainstorming: Put the photo at arm’s length, and start describing everything in it (and everything connected with it) out loud, until you hit upon the aspect that suits your purposes. Then start blurting out phrases and variations on that theme, until the mix is just right. (This also works for headlines.)
• If you don’t get any ideas immediately, brainstorm in pairs or in threes. If you don’t get great ideas quickly, especially if it’s not for a prominent story or photo, dash down something factual and move along.
• Look at the picture and read your cutline aloud. Show it to someone else. Does it give you the mood or idea you want? Does it give you any mood or idea at all? Especially if you’re going to say something witty, you’d better check and make sure other people laugh. (This test is valid only before midnight. After midnight, anyone in the office will laugh at anything.)
• Never say anything the reader could figure out just by looking at the picture. If you have a picture of two people dancing, and you say, “Two people dance on campus yesterday,” you insult our intelligence. What else have you got? Give names, more specific locations, the reason for dancing...
• Never identify people in photos with just a name, except under extreme space restrictions. Append their title, their organization, a quote, something they’ve done or some salient characteristic. The cutline should draw the reader into the story by making the person look like a dynamic character, rather than labeling the person for quick disposability.
• If there’s more than one person in a photo, name them from left to right. If you’re only interested in one or two people in a crowd, name their locations precisely (eg., “Crystal Fitzgerald, upper-left, and her brother Nick, centre with rifle, are mobbed by irate bird-fanciers in Audubon Park on Saturday.”)
• On the other hand, again, don’t insult your readers. If you have a photo of Harper and Bush, it will be pretty obvious who’s who with names alone.
Checking for and fixing common headline/cutline errors
• Cut dense, unclear phrases or gratuitous adjectives, etc.
• Correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling
• Replace abstract words with specifics
• Replace weak or passive verbs with strong, active ones
• Read aloud head/cutline and lede for tone compatibility
• Cut clutter by narrowing focus
• Cut overused puns, failed jokes, clichés
• Make sure head/cutline and lede aren’t redundant
• Replace jargon and ellipses with simpler paraphrases
• Also paraphrase abbreviations and acronyms
• Cut excessive possessives and prepositions
• Read aloud and listen for confusing double meanings
• Keep names, verbs or phrases on one line—don’t split them
• Fill extra space by adding detail, not padding
• Don’t use a verb as the first word in a headline, and avoid using verbs like “smashes” or “blasts” altogether
• Replace negative phrasings with positive ones—say someone is stalling rather than saying she “won’t decide”
• Watch for clumsy attributions, and cut or simplify them
• Replace obscure names or references with description
• Don’t use question head/cutlines more than once in a section
• Be sparing with quotations in head/cutlines. Ask yourself if the head/cutline is in questionable taste—exactly who would be offended? Do you or don’t you want to offend them?
• Soften language or scrap head/cutline if potentially libelous
• Replace bludgeoning editorializing with subtler overtones
• After writing the head/cutline, scan the story again to make sure you’ve got the point
• Always double-check with the source regarding factual accuracy
Content provided by the Martlet Publishing Society, with files from CUP.
