Letting Go of the Words, 2nd Edition

8

Announcing Your Topic with a Clear Headline

Headlines online have to do even more than headlines in print. On paper, you usually see the headline and the article together on the same piece of paper. Online (and especially on a mobile), the headline often appears first by itself as a link. It has to do a lot of work, conveying enough context to

• entice and engage the people for whom it leads to useful content

• not entice people who will be frustrated because it is a wrong choice for what they need

• signal to search engines what the content that follows is all about

This chapter is about the first level heading of your content (<H1>).

Journalism and copy writing = headline

Technical and business communication = title

But in the web world, “title” ...