What is a headline? What does one look like? What makes a good one? In news writing, the most difficult part in writing a story sometimes can be what you have to do once it's finished — summarizing it into 5-7 words that can stand alone in, at once informing the reader and drawing their interest into the story.
In This Lesson
Headline Writing
- What a headline looks like
- Structuring a headline and avoiding common pitfalls
- Upstyle headlines vs. Downstyle
- Style standards with numbers, punctuation and quotations
- Attribution in headlines
- Titles vs. Headlines
- Kickers and Deck Headlines
[Click here to view and use the presentation "Headline Writing"]
Activities
Read a Story, Write a Headline
Start practicing writing headlines without too many article details to cloud your thinking. In the corresponding activity, students, individually, will read the first few paragraphs from the snippets provided and write a headline based on the information there.
[Click here to view and print the handout "Write a Headline"]
Man Bites Dog
For 2-6 players, in Man Bites Dog, players compete to constructed the wackiest, highest-scoring headline in each round. Play until the winner reaches 500 points, or for as long as you like. Use it for a structured class activity or as a go-to when students are stuck trying to write headlines for their stories and just... can't... think anymore. Either way, we recommend buying this card game for your classroom (prices vary around $10) to get your students' creative juices flowing.