By Deborah Howell
Sunday, October 28, 2007

Strong, active headlines demand attention. They are brief and to the point, telling time-starved readers whether they want to read a story. They can be gripping, emotional -- or funny. The best pull a reader right into the lead of a story. The not-so-good bring complaints.

Headlines can be famous, such as " Headless Body in Topless Bar," from the New York Post, a wellspring of wacky headlines, and "Wall St. Lays an Egg," the headline in the show business paper Variety after the 1929 stock market crash. My favorite, from the late Minneapolis Star, is on the 1971 obituary of humorist and poet Ogden Nash: "They've Got to Stash Ogden Nash."

Copy editors write headlines. Even good "heds" often go unnoted except by the souls on the rim or by the "slot," who is often the copy desk chief. These terms go back to the days when copy editors sat around a U-shaped desk; the boss was in the "slot."

As a former copy editor, I know it's tough work, especially on a tight deadline and in a tight count. As Vince Rinehart, Editorial copy desk chief, said: "Perhaps the greatest challenge in copy editing is reading 1,000 sophisticated words on a complex topic and finding six words to tell the story and convey its nuance and tone, often with less than five minutes to do so."

Readers who complain about headlines often don't know how hard it is to tell the story in a four-line, one-column head with only 12 characters a line. Andy Parsons, a headline ace on the Metro copy desk, did just that on a Page 1 story about lost baggage:

Now Arriving

At Carousel 1,

Far Fewer

Of Your Bags

The Post stylebook says that headlines "must be accurate" and "capture the essence and tone of the story, as well as the most important element." Headlines should also "invite readers into the story. Use vivid words. Avoid headlinese . . . and deadening, bureaucratic language whenever possible. Headlines should be written in understandable, conversational English."

Bill Walsh, National copy desk chief, defines "headlinese" as "all those short words that you see only in headlines -- Rips, Flays, Nabs, Blasts, Dems, OKs. The Post is pretty good about avoiding those."

Walsh reeled off more than a dozen things a copy editor must keep in mind when writing a headline; particularly important for Page One stories, he said, is deciding whether to concentrate on the specifics of a story or on the bigger picture it might illustrate. "Sometimes you don't want to cram in every possible bit of information," he added. "It can be more effective to just offer a tantalizing taste."

Page design figures prominently in every headline. Is it a dreaded one-column headline with larger type (among the hardest to write) or a multicolumn headline with lots of leeway? Perhaps a label is needed to set the scene -- or a deck, one term used for the secondary headline below the main headline. Decks, most often used on Page 1, allow a headline writer more space to tell the story.

The headline on an Oct. 19 editorial criticizing President Bush's comments on Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, puzzled some readers and displeased others. The editorial took exception to a remark by Bush, who questioned "whether or not it's possible to reprogram the kind of basic Russian DNA, which is a centralized authority." The main headline was "Russia's DNA" and the deck was "And President Bush's CYA."

Diana Bruce Eskin of the District wrote: "I read the editorial twice to see if I had missed something . . . that would give me a clue what 'CYA' stood for." She asked two men and "both said 'CYA' meant 'cover your [butt]!' " Then she asked a friend and members of her adult study group at Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church. "This was the result: Men who understood what CYA meant: 7 out of 8 polled; women who understood: 2 out of 7 . . . Two men with PhDs understood CYA and two women with PhDs did not."

The editorial and headline were written by Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt; editorial writers often write their own headlines. Editorial copy editor Tom Rowe raised the question of taste; Rinehart took it to Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl, who was in charge in Hiatt's absence. Diehl let the headline stand. Hiatt said, "I realized it was pushing it, but I thought the word had entered the general vocabulary sufficiently to be on the permissible side of the line." Diehl thought that it was clever and that CYA had "come into the vernacular."

Rowe was right. This headline violated two basic rules. It wasn't easily understandable or explained. It also was in bad taste.

Headlines on commentary differ from straight news and features. Rinehart has three rules: "Headlines on editorials should give the reader important clues to what the editorial says without making it utterly unnecessary to read the editorial. A second is that on our type-heavy pages, headlines should be written short to give the page a little air. A third is that for op-ed headlines in particular, the best writing approach is to sort of hit it at an angle -- we want the headlines to have the same subtlety and wit that columns have -- a kind of Zen brevity."

My grandfather, Sam Williams, couldn't read, but he believed newspapers were important. He subscribed to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which arrived days late at his ranch in Schleicher County, Texas. My mother read him headlines so he could decide whether he wanted to hear the whole story. What was true almost a hundred years ago is true today. Headlines sell stories.

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or atombudsman@washpost.com.