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.

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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.

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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.

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Headlinese

Headlinese is an abbreviated form of news writing style used in newspaper headlines. Because space is limited, headlines are written in a compressed telegraphic style, using special syntactic conventions, including:

  • Forms of the verb "to be" and articles (a, an, the) are usually omitted.
  • Most verbs are in the simple present tense, e.g. "Governor signs bill", while the future is expressed by an infinitive, with to followed by a verb, as in "Governor to sign bill"
  • The conjunction "and" is often replaced by a comma, as in "Bush, Blair laugh off microphone mishap".
  • Individuals are usually specified by surname only, with no honorifics.
  • Organizations and institutions are often indicated by metonymy: "Wall Street" for the US financial sector, "Whitehall" for the UK government administration, "Madrid" for the government of Spain, "Davos" for World Economic Forum, and so on.
  • Many abbreviations, including contractions and acronyms, are used: in the US, some examples are Dems (for "Democrats") and GOP (for the Republican Party from the nickname "Grand Old Party"); in the UK, Lib Dems (for the Liberal Democrats), Tories (for the Conservative Party). The period (full point) is usually omitted from these abbreviations, though U.S. may retain them, especially in all-caps headlines to avoid confusion with the word us.
  • Lack of a terminating full stop (period) even if the headline forms a complete sentence.
  • Use of single quotation marks to indicate a claim or allegation that cannot be presented as a fact. For example, an article titled "Ultra-processed foods 'linked to cancer'" covered a study which suggested a link but acknowledged that its findings were not definitive. Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum characterizes this practice as deceptive, noting that the single-quoted expressions in newspaper headlines are often not actual quotations, and sometimes convey a claim that is not supported by the text of the article. Another technique is to present the claim as a question, hence Betteridge's law of headlines.

Some periodicals have their own distinctive headline styles, such as Variety and its entertainment-jargon headlines, most famously "Sticks Nix Hick Pix".

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Commonly used short words

To save space and attract attention, headlines often use extremely short words, many of which are not otherwise in common use, in unusual or idiosyncratic ways:

  • ace (a professional, especially a member of an elite sports team, e.g. "England ace")
  • axe (to eliminate)
  • bid (to attempt)
  • blast (to heavily criticize)
  • cagers (basketball team – "cage" is an old term for indoor court)
  • chop (to eliminate)
  • confab (a meeting)
  • eye (to consider)
  • finger (to accuse, blame)
  • fold (to shut down)
  • gambit (an attempt)
  • hike (to increase, raise)
  • ink (to sign a contract)
  • laud (to praise)
  • lull (a pause)
  • mar (to damage, harm)
  • mull (to contemplate)
  • nab (to grab)
  • nix (to reject)
  • parley (to discuss)
  • pen (to write)
  • probe (to investigate)
  • rap (to criticize)
  • romp (an easy victory or a sexual encounter)
  • row (an argument or disagreement)
  • rue (to lament)
  • see (to forecast)
  • slay (to murder)
  • slam (to heavily criticize)
  • snub (to reject)
  • solon (to judge)
  • spat (an argument or disagreement)
  • tap (to select, choose)
  • tot (a child)
  • tout (to put forward)
  • woe (disappointment or misfortune)Template:Div col end
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Unusual headlines

A number of newspapers use humour, puns, alliteration or other wordplay devices in their headlines. Equally, the need to keep headlines brief occasionally 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."

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See also

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Further reading



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