Making headlines for the right reasons
Post categories: Internet
| 22:05 UK time, Wednesday, 24 May 2006
Time to answer a common question about our headlines, namely why they sometimes seem longer than they need to be, or conversely not long enough to explain all angles of a particular story.
Well, in short, this is because our stories are fed to various 91Èȱ¬ services, and therefore need to conform to certain parameters to work everywhere they appear. So currently, for example, the main reason our headlines are between 31 and 33 characters is so they fit adequately on Ceefax.
In days gone by, Ceefax journalists valiantly endeavoured to make every headline exactly the same length, and so 'justify' to the end of the line on your TV screen. But we relaxed this rule when we introduced multi-platform authoring - and justified that on the basis headlines should above all make sense, even if they don't fit perfectly.
Having said that, we recognise our present constraints still sometimes mean players rather than contemplate a transfer, officials launch rather than investigations and occasionally, a manager rather than criticises a counterpart. And that isn't ideal.
Be assured we always want our headlines to tell the story sensibly - just be aware that, at least for now anyway, journalists are asked to keep them between 31 and 33 characters.
And in fact, though we can then tailor them at index level for our web and text outputs, it may actually be we can look to relax our rules much more in future as we move into an era where you access, customise, search for and get alerted to our news content in all sorts of different ways, places and formats.
But in the meantime, feel free to take on the 31-33 character challenge... and I'll happily change any I think you have improved for us!
