Subject: Down-style headlines
On October 18, subscribers to The Washington Post woke up to find their newspaper had been redesigned. (Here’s a PDF produced by the Post that is intended to explain the changes.) On October 19, the executive editor of the paper, Marcus Brauchli, participated in an online chat session about the redesign. A few of the questions were about the headline style: headlines are no longer capitalized in the way that gave its name to the style, but rather in “down” style.
Down-style capitalization is what we use in the pages of Copyediting: it is essentially sentence-style punctuation minus the period at the end, with an initial capital letter and all other words lowercased (except for proper names, of course). I wasn’t the editor when what was then called Copy Editor was redesigned, so I don’t know why that decision was made. But in explaining the reason for the Post’s decision to use down-style headlines, Brauchli said, “The new approach…is more readable and allows us to write slightly longer headlines. The old headline style, in which most words were capitalized, was formal and just isn’t as readable.”
I certainly think that down-style capitalization makes headlines more readable on the Web. Just compare the Web sites of The New York Times, which uses traditional headline-style capitalization, and The Washington Post, which uses down-style caps (though that’s about all that is readable, in my opinion, about its otherwise underwhelming Web site, with its moving-toward-tabloid look that is indistinguishable from many other online news sites).
I asked Bill Walsh, the A-section copy chief for the Post, what he thought about the new style. He told me, “We’re only on Day 3 [it was Wednesday when he replied], but I think the new headline style is achieving its goal. There’s more room to say something in most cases, and although there are mixed feelings about going down-style, I think it does provide a subtle nudge toward more conversational language.”
What do you think? Does headline-style capitalization make a headline easier or harder to read? Is it different in print than on the Web?
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Tags: Down-style headlines, Headlines, Washington Post
The benefit of down-style headlines is that it’s easier to identify proper nouns. Is that what he means by “more readable”? I guess the disadvantage is that … they don’t look as much like headlines. But I don’t know, the big heavy type clues you in.
I surprised myself when looking at your examples as I discovered I preferred the down-style headlines. However, gotta keep those title caps on proper nouns and noun-expressions. I find their disappearance in a lot of newspaper articles does not aid readability.
I don’t have a problem with the new headlines on the webpage The Washington Post. But I have a problem when headlines and titles are written in the “down” style (which is the traditional British style albeit not the Oxford style) in running text. The nice thing about using caps in titles is that it makes them easier to read, especially when the titles are long. So if the Post’s switch were to lead to other changes in American style, I would find it regrettable.
I lament the move to down-style headlines and don’t buy that they’re more readable. They’re more informal, and I can’t help but think that’s the bigger reason for their embrace. It’s another nod to the casualness that pervades today’s society.
But must everything be made more casual and conversational? I’m sad to see newspapers lose these touches of formality and elegance that separate them from other kinds of writing.
There are two styles of headline: downstyle, which you describe, and upstyle, in which all major words are c/lc.
You probably know this, but I’ll say it anyway: In counting letters on a page, here is the formula for headlines:
Lower-case letters count 1, except m and w, which count 1 1/2, and f, l, i, t, j, which count 1/2. Numeral 1 counts 1; punctuation marks have various counts.
Upper-case letters count 1 1/2, except M and W, which count 2, and I, which counts 1.
Examples, and you can see the length difference without counting:
A Rivalry on the Roof of the World — 33 count
A rivalry on the roof of the world — 31 1/2
How Disney Builds Stars — 24 1/2
How Disney builds stars — 22 1/2
Professor Douglas Perret Starr, Ph.D.
Other differences in headlines, upstyle and downstyle.
Headlines are written in the present tense:
Governor dies yesterday
No “a,” “an,” “the,” “and,” “to-be verbs”:
Wired money cuts path to slaying suspect
Border states turn up heat
The comma substitutes for “and”:
Mother, child die in house fire
Action verbs are preferred over “to-be” verbs.
If a “to-be” headline must be used, the to-be verb is omitted:
New chancellor appointed
Food bank under pressure
No period at the end of the headline.
The semicolon introduces a new thought unit:
Hubble grabbed; repairs coming next
Engineers ignore plan; millions at stake
Use single quotation marks, not double:
‘Mr. History’ retires
City supports effort to ‘Go Green’
And, of course, all-caps headlines are difficult to read:
CITY SUPPORTS EFFORT TO ‘GO GREEN’
Thought I would prefer down-style but don’t. It takes me longer to parse them. And even though it makes room for longer headlines, it seems to beg for shorter ones.