Another style of head discouraged or forbidden altogether by some papers is the unintentional imperative. This is a head beginning with a verb in the third person plural form, which may be read as an injunction to do something. “Kill Thirty Men” may be the head on a story of an insurrection. It means, of course, “They Kill Thirty Men,” but the form, when the subject is not expressed, is also the imperative. Only a few newspapers bar this head altogether, as there is seldom any possibility that it will be misconstrued. An iron-clad rule forbidding it can be justified only on the ground that the rule is part of a newspaper’s arbitrary style.
PRESIDENT GOES SIGHTSEEING IN THE CAPITAL.
Rides Up the Tall Tower Along With Some Tourists--Then Visits the Senate’s New Office Building and Says He’s Having Fun Like an Excursionist.
Figure 5.--New York _Sun_ head. The _Sun_ style demands that in this head the last line of the third deck shall end flush at the right.]
Trite phrasing should be avoided in the head whenever possible. “Score” and “probe” and “rap” are handy words for the copy reader because of their brevity and are liable to overuse. The head that contains worn-out expressions or that fails to get anywhere is, in the office vernacular, wooden. Woodenness is an unpardonable sin. Try to give the head a swing and an element of originality. (See Figure 5.)
Avoid negative statements in the head. Tell what happened rather than what didn’t happen, unless a negation is the feature of the story.
Other things being equal, the active voice is better than the passive. “Jones Defeats Smith for Mayor” is preferable to “Smith Is Defeated by Jones.”
Avoid the monotony of beginning each division of a three or four-deck head with the same subject. The following is an extreme example of this fault: “She Died To-day--Esteemed Lady Passes Away at Her Home West of City This Morning--She Was 85 Years of Age--She Leaves Five Children and Thirteen Grandchildren.” An even more glaring defect in this head is the omission of the name. The reader learns only that “she” died.
Don’t build any part of the head on a fact that is tucked away near the end of the story and hence may be pruned off in making up the paper. In handling a story that is likely to be cut down between editions, base the head on features well toward the beginning so that the head will not have to be changed.