Week 12 - Headline Writing

Writing headlines is a very creative process that takes a lot of time, I've found. When we first starting writing headlines I thought, “Oh, well this will be a breeze. Writing headlines can’t be that hard!” Boy, was I wrong. Trying to create headlines that will capture the reader’s attention is difficult. While writing three different headlines for one story, I found it hard to switch the words around and create a different headline for each headline. I was stuck on one singular idea for each story, and had a hard time changing it around for each type of headline and its spacing.

Going through and reading some good examples of headlines, I found it’s not just about the words; it’s also about the punctuation. Semicolons and colons are an essential part of a headline and helps to create ingenuity within a headline. The headline “Parents take note: Report cards are out” is a great example on how to use punctuation within a headline.

Creativity is a very essential part in writing headlines, and it shouldn’t come instantly. I struggled with this while writing my headlines because I wanted instant gratification, and I wanted to just be able to write a headline fast because, for some reason, I thought it would be easy.

This assignment really humbled me and made me realize how difficult it really is to write headlines for different stories in different amounts of space.