What’s your headline style?
PR Daily readers have strong opinions when it comes to style. On this site, we’ve debated topics such as the use of the serial comma, the overuse of the exclamation point, and the capitalization of titles. And who can forget the lively conversations over spacing after punctuation and the use of nouns as verbs.
One issue I would like ask PR Daily readers to debate is headline style. At my company, we recently changed our headline style to down style. With down style, only the first word, the first word after a colon or em dash, and proper nouns are capitalized in the headline. With our old headline style, up style, all words (except articles and conjunctions) were capitalized. Here’s an example.
Throwback Thursday: What was on the new hospital site in 1873?
Throwback Thursday: What Was on The New Hospital Site in 1873?
We made the change to down style to provide consistency in capitalization. For example, some of our writers capitalized every word, including and, for, but while others did not. Down style has made our lives easier.
Newspapers often use down style because it allows them to write longer headlines and the headlines are easier to read on the web. Compare the two styles by visiting The New York Times (which uses up style) and The Washington Post (which uses down style.) PR Daily also uses down style.
PR Daily readers, which headline style do you prefer?
This article was first published on Ragan Communication’s PR Daily.
