Headlines are often short and straight to the point. They use small words in a way to make an impact to the audience to grab their attention. Strong words can be used such as 'Trolls' or 'Thugs' to help emphasis a story too. Some articles use a 'play-on-words' to help draw in the attention of a reader, or use puns to draw the attention (seen in The Sun example above). Some article headlines use alliteration, where an article uses words that begin with the same letter, or words that sound similar. Examples below include "Terror Target Sugar", and "Labour's Lost It". This means it can be memorable for readers, meaning they can then pass this information on to others.
Audience Research:
A large, short&snappy headline that is eye-catching would be what people expect in a newspaper deadline.
Examples of Headlines in Local Papers:
Local newspapers include a range of headlines that summarizes an article. Examples of current headlines that feature in the Halstead Gazette include the following:
- Town's property prices rose 10% during 2015
- This article focuses on property prices during the previous year, and includes a statistic to back-up the point.
- Colchester Stagecoach students wow the West End
- This article focuses on a group of students performing a theater event, which was positively praised. Alliteration is included with 'wow the West End', while the name of the people involved has been included, to make it focused on them.
- Women assaulted in Halstead
- This article focuses on an assault in a local town. The headline is short and snappy, meaning it could be easy to remember.
- Hundreds turn out to see Boxing Day hunt
- This article focuses on a village's Boxing Day tradition working with a horse hunt group. 'Hundreds' is written in the article to include a statistic to show how many people attended.
From this, I can conclude most of these headlines are short and snappy, while statistics are included in some. I will use this as inspiration for my headlines which I will use in my final task.
