Headline Writing

This week in our editing class, we're talking about headline writing. The few times I've tried to write a good one. I've failed miserably and I've concluded that it takes a lot of talent to write a headline that both encompasses the entire article and is catchy.

I started thinking about misleading headlines when I came across this one from the Globe and Mail this morning.

"Girl who had hiccups for five weeks charged with murder"

My initial thought, before reading the article, was what I hoped to believe. Having the hiccups for five weeks drove her to murder?

But when I read the article, I found out that a woman who was famous in 2007 for having the hiccups for five weeks when she was 15 years old (she appeared on The Today Show and got a hug from Keith Urban).

Now 19, she has been charged with first-degree murder, the climax of a downhill slide which her mother claims started with the "curse of the hiccups". The girl ran away from home twice and the family sued a hiccup-curing company for using the girl's image without permission.

But really, I got to thinking, without the mother's somewhat ridiculous claim, what is the link between the hiccups and the murder? Without her hiccup fame, we likely wouldn't be hearing about a Florida murder in a Canadian paper.

But I know for sure, without that headline, I likely wouldn't have read the article. So despite the confusion, maybe the headline writer did his/her job?



(Images from blogcrack.com)