Headlines: Proceed with caution

An often overrated aspect of writing, a headline is one of the most important dimensions of a good story. After all, the headline is the first thing a reader sees. If the headline does not captivate the potential reader, the odds of your story being read dramatically diminishes. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a perfect template for writing a good headline. There are many factors that can affect a headline such as culture, audience and tone. Writing a headline for the New York Times front page is much different than writing a headline about the same thing for an adolescent audience. The one piece that I can give is this; when I write a headline I try and forget that I wrote it, in order to remove my own bias. I then read the headline and ask myself if I would read the story because the headline captivated me and forced me to read it. If the answer is no, I write the headline all over again. I usually write three of four headlines and then ask four or five people to vote on which one they would be more likely to read.

For this weeks editing mistake, I found an improper use of the past tense version of the word grow. I really hope that the editors did this on purpose. I remember this movie, Adventures in babysitting. She is all grown up, or all growed up!