The importance of a title in writing

If you’re still reading this post now, you’re probably one of the those feeling very boring, or perhaps, you’re just someone who has to read it, namely, Katharina :)

What I learnt from my internship was that a title is very important to a piece of writing. If you look at the title of this post, you’d probably say “I know” and click on to other more interesting links. The title does not spur u to read further.

One of my workplace’s supervisors once told me that in order to know whether an article would be read, it’s important to put myself as the reader and asked, “Why would I spend time reading this article?”.

Two weeks ago, I was asked to draft an internal press release pertaining to my company’s weekend marathon results. Some of the ‘highlights‘ during the event were some participants spending 40 minutes queuing for the loo and a few going for a coffee break during the marathon.

I prepared the release and had it titled “The results are out!” The title was rejected by my supervisor who commented that unless the readers had participated in the event, no one would bother to read it. This meant that only a handful of people would read the release if I used my title.

My title was subsequently changed to “DfC’s (my company’s name) results affected by loo queue and coffee breaks”. Thought the title was a somewhat lenghty, it did entice the readers to read further. When I first saw the title, I do want to find out who those jokers are.

Well, I guess this is just another way to show why journalism writing can be so challenging at times. What I find to be the most important thing in journalism writing is – Surely there are a lot of people who can write flawlessly with perfect grammar and structures. But if no one reads it, it means you can’t write.