When it comes to headlines, some advice seems universal — make them short, snappy and pique the reader’s curiosity. Other suggestions are more specific — spell out numbers, use adjectives sparingly and drop articles (a, an, the).
One key lesson is that headline best practices differ depending on where they appear — NPR story pages, homepages, social media accounts and Apple News, for example. Headlines also need to be adapted for each context because the outcomes and success criteria vary.
As NPR’s Digital Lead, John Wood has a lot of experience with headlines. His current team of reporters and editors has a process they follow to create and test different headlines for their stories, which are published on the All Things Considered website. A version of the headline that works best in print is then used as a headline for the audio version of the story, which is posted on NPR’s homepage and other places.
The headlines that perform well online are often simpler and shorter than the ones that perform poorly, and they tend to communicate more about people rather than policy. This is important because it reduces the barrier between readers and a story they might have ignored. It also helps the headlines stand on their own and satiate readers’ curiosity without making them read the full article. Headlines that have a more conversational style — with more pronouns and less prepositions, for instance — also perform better than the more academic and formal headlines.