You should get a title for your written assignments. Not only have we have come to expect them, but they offer readers a nifty portal into your work. For most academic writing, try to provide a title that is more than just a label (i.e. more than the content you would give to a file name). Whenever we teachers get a paper titled “Paper number 2,” we know that it is going to be a dud, that the writer has nothing to say. “Hamlet: An Analysis of the Play” is not much better.
Nor does a title echoing the assignment stir our juices. Teachers want to know what you have to say, not hear their own rhetoric reflected. On the other hand, “Emily Dickinson and Allen Ginsberg: Black Holes of the Mind” makes us want to read the paper. This title suggests the content might be interesting.
Titles need to be sexy, like a Victorian woman who lifted her skirt to flash a bit of ankle, they need to titillate the reader and make him or her want to see more of what’s under the cover.*
So, to make a title:
Look through your paper for three of the more specific words that might capture your essay’s ideas.
Find a way to use one or more of these in combination with some reference to the main topic.
Be sure this combination both makes sense and that the grammar of it works.
Examples of good titles:
Delaying Tactics: Hamlet as a Revenge Tragedy Hero
Action Heroes Need Not Apply: Laertes and Hamlet
Of Two Minds: Cognitive Dissonance in Henry V
* Modified from Sin Boldly! Dr. Dave’s Guide to Writing the College Paper