Headlines, Headings, Subheadings, and Captions
Headlines, Headings, Subheadings, and Captions
Why should we use headlines, headings, subheadings, and captions? Many people believe that they are just used to make a document clean and clearly formatted. While these are certainly some of the reasons why headlines, headings, subheadings, and captions are used, there are many other, more subtle reasons.
Headlines are obviously used to draw the reader into the document, but headlines must also capture as much of the article's content as possible in as few words as possible, all while avoiding ambiguity of meaning. After all, the headline "Police Department Helps Dog Bite Victim" will probably get a lot of attention, but it's an embarrassing mistake to make.
The primary function of headings and subheadings is to keep the document organized and clean. But there is an unintended consequence of this. They also help writers better organize their documents. A diligent author will work to ensure that the headings in his or her document are accurate representations of the content. If that author realizes that reorganizing the content based on the headings would improve the overall organization of the content, the final product will be better for it.
Captions are the link between the text and the figures, tables, charts, and graphs it contains. A good caption makes this connection in, again, as few words as possible. Sometimes detail is needed, especially in scientific and medical documents. Well-written captions, in concert with streamlined formatting dictated by a well-established style guide, can potentially set a good paper apart from a bad one.
In order for a headline to be effective, it must grab the attention of the reader. Talk to any writer; capturing the reader's attention in a few paragraphs is as difficult a challenge as anyone wants to confront. Doing it in a few words is perhaps the ultimate challenge. The headline that reads "Writers live longer" might be accurate, but it is almost too efficient. The headline "Live longer simply by putting pen to paper" is poetic and informative, and it's just vague enough to leave the reader curious about what those last four words really mean. It divulges information but still leaves an air of mystery so that the reader has to continue to read to learn more.
Three techniques will help a writer produce effective headlines.
Keep the readers in mind! It is a good idea to create a connection with readers so that they will be willing to read more of the document. Simply focusing on a brand name or the benefits of a certain product will not be as effective as providing information on how it will benefit the reader. Compare the impact the following headlines have: "BiBi's Organic Foods; check out the sensational salads" and "You will keep coming back for healthier food that also tastes great at BiBi's Organic Foods." Addressing readers directly draws them in.
Pose a question. A question automatically addresses the reader, as does a problem, need, desire, or want that the reader has. A headline written in a question format is highly effective. Here are a few examples: "Are You Spending Too Much on Groceries?" "Are You in Need of a Doctor?" "Do You Have Dry, Itchy Skin?" and "How Do You Make Your Baby Stop Crying?"
Stimulate the reader's curiosity. There are many English words and phrases that can be used to stimulate a reader's curiosity. Some of these words include these mistakes, secrets, discover, how to, what's wrong, and common problems. Any word that could make the reader think that the following information could affect them will stimulate their interest. Here are a few examples: "How to Become a Millionaire," "Diet Secrets Revealed," "Discover the World of No Taxes," and "You Aren't the Only One Experiencing These Common Household Problems." Combining a question with one of these stimulating words will make a headline even more effective. Check out these examples: "How Many of These Mistakes Do Your Children Make on a Daily Basis?" "What's Wrong with Wanting to Have a Little Fun?" "What Secrets Are the Doctors Not Telling You?" and "How Much Is Too Much?"
Headings and subheadings are used to break up content within a document. Often writers use headings when they should be using a subheading, or even insert a heading or subheading when they shouldn't. Here are some tips on how to write headings and subheadings. These tips will help you identify whether a heading or subheading is being used correctly.
Headings and subheadings can be written either as statements or questions, but in academic writing, they are usually statements. If a heading is written as a question, the subheading can be used to answer the question and connect it to the text that follows it.
Similar to headlines, if a heading is written in a question, it should keep the reader in mind and be clever enough to interest the reader to keep on reading. When a heading or subheading is written as a statement, it should highlight the main point or argument of the text in the following section. The best way to do this is to try to summarize the whole section in one sentence.
Captions have a vital function: they are used to describe the purpose of an image. Captions connect the image to the argument or main purpose of the paper. A caption can consist of a few words or a few sentences, depending on how the image connects to the argument of the paper. Images can be analyzed and interpreted in many different ways, so a caption is needed to clarify the intent and purpose of the image. The most critical mistake that many writers make is forgetting to write a caption. If an image is used in a document, it must have a caption! Another critical mistake is leaving out essential words. There is a huge difference between innocent and not innocent. Make sure that the caption includes all the information needed to explain the image and that everything in the caption is accurate.
In order to write a clear and concise caption, the writer should focus on a few important principles. Captions should clearly identify the subject, be succinct, establish relevance to the article, provide context for the picture, and draw the reader into the article.
Clearly Identify the Subject: Images most likely have a primary subject that is relevant to the document. The caption should clearly identify this subject. There are many different types of images, including paintings, photographs, drawings, computer graphics, maps, and graphs. It would be beneficial to describe what type of image it is and possibly where it is located or the date when the image was produced. This information could have an effect on establishing the subject.
Identify the Subject Succinctly: A caption should be written clearly and to the point. While it may be difficult to describe an image and its relevance in five words or less, a caption should be as short as possible. The information found in the caption should be the bare minimum; it should identify the subject and draw a connection to the document—that's it. The main body of the document is where the image should be explained in more detail, if needed, or an image description page can be created to provide more background information.
Establish Relevance to the Document: The main purpose of a caption is to connect the image to the document or the argument being made in the document. If someone looks at the image, reads the caption, and still wonders what the image has to do with the document, the caption is not effective. If a connection cannot be made between the image and the document, the image should probably be removed. The image must have a purpose!
Providing Context for the Image: An image is not like a video, which can show how something happens. An image captures one moment in time, and what came before or after is either left to the imagination or needs to be further explained in the caption. If an image of the Mona Lisa is included in a document, it might be helpful to mention in the caption that it is a painting of Lisa del Gioconda, created by Leonardo Da Vinci, and it now resides in the Louvre. If this information does not prove to be advantageous to the document or the argument made in the document, then do not include it.
Drawing the Reader into the Document: When readers are making the critical decision about whether to actually read something, they often look at the images and captions to determine if they want to invest their time in reading the whole document. A successful caption should catch readers' attention and provide them with enough information to pique their interest, but also leave out enough information so that they feel the urge to read more and learn more. Catchy and quippy phrases can also be used to lure readers into the document.
Wording: When it comes to captions, wording can be tricky. As editors and proofreaders, we like to see full grammatical sentences. For writers, sometimes short ungrammatical sentences are necessary. Sentences in a caption can be written ungrammatically to simply label the image (such as "V-J Day Kiss, Times Square"), or they can be written in a full sentence (such as "The image of the V-J Kiss, taken in Times Square, is known worldwide."). While the short caption gives the reader pertinent information, the longer caption connects the image to the document more clearly. A title-and-subtitle style with a colon can also be utilized in a caption (such as "Radicalism: seeking drastic changes in the social order").
There are very few situations where a caption is not needed under an image. This means that photos, drawings, graphics, maps, diagrams, and other images can be without captions only if they have legends or labels that clearly explain significant features. If there is a picture of a group of people that have already been named in the document, the names and their location in the picture are the only information needed.
Let's recap! Headlines, headings, and subheadings should be easily recognizable within a document. They should generally be short and descriptive. They should tell the reader what to expect in the following text. But what about proofreading these pesky things? You've determined that the author and editor of the text have done a bang-up job creating these critical elements, but what kinds of things should you check for to ensure that they read just as smoothly as the rest of the text?
The elements described in this lesson are often some of the most overlooked by both editors and proofreaders. Those of us in the industry spend so much time on the main body of text in documents that we often forget about these small but important elements. So let's take a look at the specifics of proofreading headlines, headings, and subheadings. It's a fairly simple process, so let's get to it!
The process of proofreading headlines, headings, and subheadings is just as straightforward as proofreading anything else. And as with almost every other aspect of proofreading and editing, consistency is key. For our purposes, we've broken the process of proofreading the text of these elements into three categories.
Capitalization
The capitalization used in headlines, headings, and subheadings depends on the style guide the document must follow. Generally speaking, these elements require title case. This means that all major words are capitalized, while articles and prepositions shorter than four letters are not. However, if there is a specific style guide that requires varying types of capitalization, you must be sure to double-check each individual headline, heading, or subheading to ensure that all capitalization requirements are met. For example, APA requires that level 1 and level 2 headings (APA uses levels of headings as opposed to using the term "subheading") use title case, while all subsequent levels use sentence case. MLA uses title case for all headings and subheadings. Chicago style describes the use of both sentence and title case but does not stipulate when each should be used. The following are examples of both sentence and title case for the same heading. First up, sentence case.
Mating habits of termites living in equatorial regions
The same heading in title case would look like this:
Mating Habits of Termites Living in Equatorial Regions
Captions deserve a special note here, as they are all over the board. Here's your barometer for captions. Most of the time, they should be written in sentence case. While the rules vary as to whether they should be grammatically sound (some styles even say that it's okay to have sentence fragments in captions and you can punctuate them as sentences), all style guides agree that captions are basically "mini" bodies of text that should be capitalized like the main body of text. Titles of figures may employ title case or sentence case, but rarely will you see title case in a caption. If you do, you might want to check a style book to make sure that it's correct. Whatever the case, the best thing to do as a proofreader is to determine the capitalization style required and make a single pass through the document checking all the headings for capitalization.
Typos and Spelling Errors
Obviously, it's important to make sure that everything is spelled correctly. This goes without saying. But it's quite common for proofreaders to miss spelling and typographical errors in headlines, headings, and subheadings. So our first bit of instruction here is simply to make sure that you are checking the spelling of words in headlines, headings, and subheadings. But that's not enough. Often it is the case that acronyms are used both in headings and the body of the text. As a rule, the first time that acronyms are used in the body of a text, they must be spelled out. The acronym follows in parentheses, like this: " . . . in a lawsuit headed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)." Headlines, headings, and subheadings also follow this rule, but they follow it independently. This means that an acronym, even if it has already been spelled out in the main body of text, must still be spelled out the first time it appears in a heading.
Another area to pay special attention to is captions. As we mentioned when we were talking about capitalization, captions occupy an odd place in texts and conform to very few rules. Sentence fragments are completely acceptable as long as they make sense and accurately convey information. An editor and proofreader might feel out of sorts when reading captions and may miss errors that do matter, like spelling errors. Add to this the fact that captions in technical or medical documents often employ extremely complex language and specific terminology and you have the perfect environment for simple errors, such as spelling errors, to breed. We recommended a separate pass for capitalization, and we recommend a separate pass for spelling as well. You'll find that making quicker passes focused on specific errors allows you to catch many things you'll miss when trying to take on a lot at one time.
Generally speaking, headlines follow one of two forms (and this includes titles of works). In newspapers and magazines, they are generally flush against the left margin, and for major headlines on covers or above the fold, they are centered on the page. Capitalization will vary (newspapers often use all caps), but you'll rarely find anything that goes against this. Formatting for captions is relatively simple. They are almost always at least two font sizes smaller than the rest of the text, and they always use the figure to which they refer to establish their boundaries on the page. They are sometimes in italics and, on rare occasions, are in bold.
Formatting for headings and subheadings is a rather extensive topic. We'll give you some general guidelines, and then we'll use APA as an example of a style all its own. Here are the general principles you should follow. Headings and subheadings should not be centered on the page unless a particular style guide requires it. They should be written in line with the left margin and should never be written in all caps or italics. Headings should be in a larger and bolder font than the rest of the text in the document. Subheadings shouldn't be as big or bold as headings, but they should be at least one or two points larger than the main text of the document.
If headings and subheadings are numbered, note this on your style sheet and check the seriation on your final pass. It's extremely important that this be one of the last things you check, as numbering can change extensively throughout the editing process (and even during the proofreading process). Next, let's take a look at how the APA does it.
For APA style, use the following guidelines. Note the varied use of alignment, italics, bold, punctuation, and capitalization. The following numbered list refers to the heading levels.
Centered, boldface, title case.
Left-aligned, boldface, title case.
Indented, boldface, sentence case with a period. Text begins immediately following the heading.
Indented, boldface, italicized, sentence case with a period. Text begins immediately following the heading.
Indented, italicized, sentence case with a period. Text begins immediately following the heading.
Quite the list! We'll say it again: your best friend is consistency. No matter what style you are following (even a style created by the editor or author), proofread it for consistency.
Headlines, headings, subheadings, and captions warrant their own editing pass when proofreading. Too many errors slip by unnoticed in these hiding places. Inconsistencies in formatting and spelling tend to be overlooked, and this can become extremely problematic as these are the first places a client or reader will notice errors. Be extra diligent when proofreading these error hiding places.
Last Updated: 09/09/2022