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Headline
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A headline is text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.
It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a headline and should not be set in type.
lines are written in much larger type size than the article text, and often in a different font entirely.
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A headline is text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.
It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a headline and should not be set in type.
Format
Headlines are written in much larger type size than the article text, and often in a different font entirely. Headlines are often in sentence case, although title case is often used in the USA.
Headline conventions include normally using present tense even when discussing events that happened in the recent past; omitting forms of the verb "to be" in certain contexts; and removing short articles like "a" and "the". Most newspapers feature a very large headline on their front page, dramatically describing the biggest news of the day. Words chosen for headlines are often short, giving rise to headlinese.
A headline may also be followed by a smaller secondary headline, often called subhead or "deck hed", which gives more information.
Russ Willison describes headlines as the "barb on the hook."
Production of headlines within the editorial environment
Headlines are generally written by copy editors, but may also be written by the writer, the page layout designer or a news editor or managing editor.
The film The Shipping News has an illustrative exchange between the protagonist, who is learning how to write for a local newspaper, and his publisher:
- Publisher: It's finding the center of your story, the beating heart of it, that's what makes a reporter. You have to start by making up some headlines. You know: short, punchy, dramatic headlines. Now, have a look, [pointing at dark clouds gathering in the sky over the ocean] what do you see? Tell me the headline.
- Protagonist: HORIZON FILLS WITH DARK CLOUDS?
- Publisher: IMMINENT STORM THREATENS VILLAGE.
- Protagonist: But what if no storm comes?
- Publisher: VILLAGE SPARED FROM DEADLY STORM.
In the United States, headline contests are sponsored by the American Copy Editors Society, the National Federation of Press Women, and many state press associations.
Unusual headlines
Occasionally, the need to keep headlines brief leads to unintentional double meanings, if not double entendres. For example, if the story is about the president of Iraq trying to acquire weapons, the headline might be IRAQI HEAD SEEKS ARMS. Or if some agricultural legislation is defeated in the United States House of Representatives, the title could read FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE.
According to Claud Cockburn, the following headline won a competition for being the dullest ever: "Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead."
See also
Further reading
- Harold Evans News Headlines (Editing and Design : Book Three) Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd (February 1974) ISBN-10: 0434905526 ISBN-13: 978-0434905522
- Fritz Spiegl What The Papers Didn't Mean to Say Scouse Press, Liverpool, 1965
External links
Exhibition of famous newspaper headlines (2006)
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