In the former, headlines are intended to tease or draw the reader into the story, much like a barker who says you ve just got to see the dancing girls inside the tent. These headlines don t say as much, but they say it with style. In the latter, headlines are a way for readers flipping through the paper to find out in a hurry what s going on, much as pedestrians on downtown streets can look at the window displays to see what s for sale. They don t have to dig through what s inside to know what s there. Most papers will mix these kinds of headlines to match the tone of their stories.
Serious stories require serious headlines, and any miscasting of the tone of the head tends to jar.
Headlines fall flat when they try to be cute on stories that aren t. Besides the tone, headlines must navigate through a lot of potential problems. Errors in spelling, fact and grammar cast doubt on the paper s intelligence. Headlines that say more than stories, such as heads reporting a fact that can t be confirmed, mislead the reader. And headlines that can be read two ways sometimes are unintentionally funny.