Good and Bad Headlines

Sharon Choi

Bad headline: Hospital Board Refuses To Resign
Article link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062501889.html

This headline is from an article in the Metro section of today's Post. My initial reaction to this headline was, 'Board refuses to resign?' Obviously, the article is not going to be about a physical board, perhaps wooden, that refuses to resign. In order to prevent this kind of confusion, the headline should have used something like 'board of directors.' A more specific subject would have cleared up any confusions in the headline.

Good headline: Attacker Kills 4 Sunni Sheiks Who Aided U.S.
Article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html

This headline is from an article in the World section of the New York Times. I like this one because it is summarizes the article with a simple subject-verb-object format. There are no words or phrases that may confuse readers. It is very straightforward with what it wants to say.