Really spoil the ending in the headline

Buddy Stals Kinborg brought me back a newspaper from his recent travels. It’s the student paper from an Adventist University…I won’t reveal which one, only to say that it rhymes with “othern.”  The front page has a headline that nearly gets the point, but it can be even better.

The headline is “Library introduces new search engine to students.”

My question is, “What’s the name of the search engine?” Or maybe it doesn’t have a name. There’s no name for the search engine mentioned in the story. Maybe it’s the nameless search engine. Anyway, I thought the headline could have offered more detail -- its name, what it does, or a critique. Examples:

Library introduces search engine Geegle

Geegle offers search of all library content

New Geegle search engine delivers, but bugs still remain

This reminds me of a seminar I taught in Jamaica last month – one of the best groups I’ve ever encountered. Even so, a few of the headlines written by workshop participants got close, but didn’t quite make the grade:

New leader selected for conference president

Beach ministry announces new director

These are close, but they don’t quite spoil the ending right away, which a good headline does. In addition to saying a position has been filled, a headline should actually say who that person is ... maybe even something about them. Now, church writers in Jamaica are writing excellent headlines, such as the following:

Jones selected as new conference president

Deputy Director Smith tapped as new beach ministry director

This goes along with this blog's first post, on August 30.  Instead of just saying that something happened, give details about what happened.  For example, a more effectively headline than:

Conference president speaks at church Sabbath Afternoon

would be

Conference president calls for more cheese at potlucks

For more on this, please see the August 30, 2011 post.

For now, help your readers understand the entire story in your headline.