Effective Titles and Headers

The titles for the documents you write can make all the difference in whether they are effective (and even whether they get read). Just as important, the headers that you use within a document can help make sure that your readers find the key information in the document. Today, we’ll look at examples of both titles and headers and talk about what makes them effective.

  1. Go to “Tests & Quizzes” in Scholar and complete today’s in-class writing, “02/03 Writing Titles.” Your work will be graded for effort and completeness, but minor issues in spelling, grammar, and punctuation won’t matter.
  2. We’ll go over the tips on writing titles and headers from Markel, Chapter 6: Writing for Your Readers.
  3. We’ll look at the headers in some of the sample documents for Project 1 to see how effective they are.

Homework

  • I am still going through the documents you submitted last week. I hope to have feedback to you by Tuesday. I’ll send out an email announcement when they are posted. Be sure you check to make sure that your document will work for the first project.
  • Read Markel, Chapter 7: Designing Documents and Web Sites, and think about how the ideas in the chapter apply to the document you are analyzing for Project 1. We’ll come back to this chapter periodically during the semester as we talk about the design for the different projects you work on.