Bulletin editor craft

By Lloyd Davis, GRAMMAR AND STYLE JUDGE

Inconsistency is an error

One of the most common errors editors make is an inconsistent way of writing headlines. Many editors treat headlines like song titles — capitalizing all of the important words (not capitalizing “and,” “of,” “a,” etc.). There is nothing wrong with this; in fact some newspapers use this method of printing headlines. But to do so, you are forcing yourself into a trap. There are many words that are in a gray area of being important, and it’s easy to capitalize them one time and use lower case another time.

These two headlines are from the same bulletin:

From The Editor’s Desk
Do you remember this quartet?

Here are two more from a different bulletin:

Spring Show 2002’s A Hit!
News from the Prez

To avoid these inconsistencies, capitalize on the first word of a headline and all proper nouns. You certainly don’t want to capitalize every word of a headline. Sure, you say, only the picky people like judges will notice things like this. That is mostly correct, but why not write headlines so there are none of these inconsistencies for judges — or anyone else — to notice.

Avoid the error of inconsistency.

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