Oh, behave, with your bad headline self!

1. Search for action, rather than verbs of being (is, has, was).
2. Avoid word repetition: The worse headline I've ever personally witnessed: Town Plan Planning Gets Go Ahead.
3. Be descriptive. A header hooks the reader. Don't "bait and switch" with a misleading statement in 48-point type.
4. Omit unnecessary words like prepositions, helping verbs (is, are) or articles (a, an, the).
5. Strive for words that are short, common, colorful, powerful, specific.

As David Michelmore, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor, notes: "Heads are a little like poetry. (Not a lot, but a little.) There's no room for extraneous words. The formats are uncompromising. How they sound counts. How they look counts. And getting just the right word is what makes them fun."

Good uns

• Pictures from Die Hunns and Black Halos show
• Office Depot Pays United States $4.75 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations (too long, but even if you only read the first few words,
• you have an idea of what it's about)
• Ice cream trucks as church marketing

Cruddy headlines
Vague and bland, poor captions don't express the story or its urgency. They're unlikely to rank high on search-engines or to inspire clicks when they do. Cases in point:

• What Is It That You Want?
• Hey, kids! Comics!
• Victims Abandoned

Gotcha!
Fake-out headlines promise one thing (usually sex, drugs and rock and roll), then deliver another (death, taxes). While this can result in a bunch of click-throughs, temporarily spiking traffic, it doesn't build a solid readership. Still, sometimes writers just can't help themselves...

• It may not boost your libido or take cellulite off your thighs, but… (about the latest issue of Serendipity) –Tamara’s Big Blog of Marvel
• Fat Tits (about birds) – Bowlserised
• Dawn Porter in the Nude (about, well, Dawn Porter naked, but in a documentary-reviewing sort of way)– Louche, I’m Not Gay

Marie Javins, author of the blog No Hurry in JC, doesn’t write these, but they still happen: “I get loads of link-throughs from people searching for "lion porn" from the Simba Love entry. Go figure.

“Also tons of hits from people searching for JC Marie, who is apparently some sexy model.”

The search-engine hilarity doesn't stop there. Javins authored the travelogue book Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik, so she suffers "hits all the time from people searching for dik, hot dik, big dik, and other variations. Because the world is full of bad spellers.”

Many bloggers monitor search terms and post or riff on the most amusing ones. It creates something of a feedback loop, but seems like mostly harmless amusement...

Other headline gurus speak out

• Rhythm Makes Your Headlines Sing (Doo Dah, Doo Dah)
• Rhymes and Reason
• The art of writing headlines
• So Many Headlines, So Few Zingers
• Readers Consume What They See
• Writing Headlines