by Mihail Tanasie

Created on: March 24, 2009   Last Updated: March 31, 2009

As you may know from your own experience, people rarely read a whole newspaper, because maybe they don't have enough time, but whatever the reason is, you are the one who loses if your article doesn't attract the readers attention. This can happen in most of cases, because of the article headline.

An editor or a publisher is always trying to find the best headline for his article, and so you should do. There are only few people that can write headlines easily, using their varied experience in this field, but if you follow these tips, your article will not "escape" unnoticed, for sure.

First of all, as a general rule, your article should tell the reader only part of the story. Before publishing any article, you need to think carefully at the headline, because a headline should:

1) not be very long (this is a waste of information, that you could reveal later, in the article body). Typically, a headline should not be either very short (an 4 word or less article headline is not always the best choice), but usually, a headline should be able to be placed preferably in one row.

2) catch the attention very easy (a good question can be very attractive as a headline). The most read articles are those which contain words like "best", "worst", "hottest", and other superlatives in their headlines.

3) make reference to the second part of the article, but only when this can be done (the reader will read the whole article if he wants answers)

4) not contain ambiguous information, but to be clear, and easily understood by the reader.

Everyone usually reads the headline first, but if we can understand the idea of the article by reading only the headline, we will not read the article, so when you write the headline, you should be clear, but not very clear. If the headline is for an article that is going to be uploaded on the Internet, you should include keywords, because this is important if you want to have more results in search engines. If the article contains advice for the reader, words like "your" or "yours" should be also included in the headline. Also, you always need to know how to play with words, especially when it comes about a headline.

If your article has attracted attention, which is not possible without a well-chosen headline, the first step has been made, and only then you can enjoy the attention of readers.

I hope these tips were useful for you. Good luck!

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