Public Health Nursing Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 101103 0737-1209/r 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. doi: 10.1111/j.1525-1446.2010.00832.

EDITORIAL

Eight Recommendations for Writing Titles of Scientic Manuscripts

First, colons began to bother me. Colons in the middle of manuscript titles, that is. Then, titles that began with gerunds got on my nerves. Over time, certain stylistic conventions in titles became increasingly aggravating. Why was I becoming so reactive to manuscript titles? Why did some titles attract me and others repel? What makes a title good? Titles hold a special place of prominence in the scientic literature. They sit atop every article; they are searchable by every major indexing service. Titles inform readers exactly what information will be presented in the paper (Penrose & Katz, 2004). Titles attract readers to a paper and weigh strongly in computer-based literature searches and information retrieval (Hartley, 2005, 2007). Titles serve as advance organizers (i.e., signposts) of the topic of the subsequent text (Hartley & Betts, 2007, p. 2335). All that is heavy lifting for such a few words. Yet, there is a remarkable dearth of evidence in the academic literature on the use of titles or their effects (Hartley, 2005, 2007). A few descriptive studies of titles focused (oddly) on colons, with nurses leading the charge. In Diers and Downs (1994) studycum-satire, they showed a striking increase in colons in articles from our most prestigious journals. Over the past 20 years, titular colonicityor hanging titles or subtitleshas become epidemic in many scholarly publications (Hartley, 2005). With these proliferating colons have come longer titles, which nearly doubled in word count over that period. Subtitles tended to be longer than the main title. The prevalence of subtitles differed by discipline: they occurred more often in titles of research articles than of applied clinical articles and in business, social science, and humanities titles than in titles from computer or basic sciences. Evidence was divided over whether colons appeared in lower or higher status journals within a discipline (Hartley, 2005). A few other characteristics of titles in scientic journals have been evolving. Titles are becoming longer in general, regardless of punctuation, and therefore presumably more informative. Small correlations have been found between the length of titles and both the number of authors and the length of the text (Hartley, 2005). Alas, no research on gerunds. Gerunds are verb forms that end in-ing but are used as nouns in sentences. In titles, gerunds (e.g., improving or expanding or investigating) imply some sort of action but without identifying the actor. For this lack of clarity, Williams (2009) decries most nominalizations of verbs. My gripe is not only that the actor is obscured but also that in most cases, neither the actor nor the action is a key concept or variable in the article, and so the gerund is superuous and does no important work. I stand accused: Incorporating a built environment module into an accelerated second-degree community health nursing course (Hays, Davis, & Miranda, 2006). Better would have been simply: A built environment module for an accelerated seconddegree community health nursing course. How effective are titles of any sort in doing their job? The answer is, not very. In one study, most titles were informative enough for readers to distinguish research from clinical papers but wholly inadequate to inform them of research quality. That is, trained raters could not tell whether a given title headed a systematic clinical summary or trial; an individual study or nonsystematic review; or an editorial, letter, animal study, etc. (Demner-Fushman, Hauser, & Thoma, 2005). In a different study, the presence or absence of a title made no difference in the perceived clarity of the associated abstract (Hartley & Betts, 2007). On a more positive note, recall of new material was slightly improved when a title included both specic and general information about the material (Hartley, 2005). The last nding may have relevance for assessing the use of a colon as a separator between the two types of information. Diers and Downs (1994) call nurses to additional research on punctuation in titles. With tongues rmly in their cheeks (I think), they recommend an

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exploratory study of the migration of colons away from titles and into the articles text and an intervention study of whether good colonization of titles could advance the scholarly agenda of the guild by lending clarity and grace to our writing. Hartley (2007) developed a taxonomy of 12 types of titles used in academic writing. These include titles that: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Announce a general subject; Particularize a specic theme; Ask a controlling question; Indicate the answer to a question; Indicate the authors position on a topic; Emphasize a research method; Suggest guidelines or comparisons; Use startling or effective openings; Use alliteration; Use literary or biblical allusions; Use puns; and Completely mystify.

He offers the list as a conversation starter for faculty, students, and writing groups to discuss which kind of title may be appropriate for particular texts and how each may function to draw (or exclude) targeted readers of an article. For illustrating Hartleys taxonomy, I might consider as titles of this editorial: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Titles Effective titles of scientic manuscripts How should an author write a good title? A good manuscript title is crafted according to eight principles. Good titles eschew colons, gerunds, and other graceless elements. Titles of scholarly manuscripts: A non-systematic review Eight characteristics of effective manuscript titles. Crowning your article: How to write an effective title Titles to top your text The eight commandments of writing manuscript titles Scoping out colons Editorial peek

writer especially in my early years, I now wish that I could re-title some. One title (Nursing Management of Chronic Pain) was so general that it could have referred to an entire book, and another (Voices in the Recordin my view the best article I ever wrote) had a title that must still completely mystify anyone who happened upon it (Hays, 1989; Wallace & Hays, 1982). Style manuals give advice on titles. The AMA Manual of Style prescribes concise, specic, informative titles that use key words to represent the articles content (American Medical Association [AMA], 2007). It urges authors to avoid the too-general and the too-detailed title, extraneous words, sentences, and questions as titles, abbreviations, and place names . The AMA likes colons that precede design elements and research quality indicators. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2009) prescribes simplicity and style. The best titles identify the manuscripts key variables, theories, and the relationships among them. Their favored titles are fully explanatory while standing alone and omit extraneous words and abbreviations (APA, 2009, p. 23). Titles should be concise, with no more than 12 words. Subtitles should be reserved for supplementary information that helps the reader retrieve needed information, e.g., about the studys methodology, but should be avoided where key elements can be arranged without a colon (APA). In light of the above, the bothersome issue seems not to be the colons or gerunds. The important issue is how simple, stylish, and informative a title is for smart and busy readers. On behalf of these, I offer the following recommendations for constructing titles. They are based on skimpy scientic evidence but on the experience of others and my own foibles and regrets in titling. 1. Write a title using keywords that will echo throughout the manuscriptits primary concepts and variables, its headings and subheadings, and its tables and gures. 2. Write a title that triages the manuscript for readers wanting research or clinical focus or a highly relevant methodology. 3. Follow the specic instructions of the appropriate style manual. 4. Search for the words of your title in the controlled vocabularies of the major indexes, i.e., the Subject Headings in CINAHL and Keywords in MeSH, to

Or maybe not. With some chagrin, I compared the list with my own Curriculum Vitae. A wholly inadequate title-

Hays: Writing Titles of Scientic Manuscripts conrm whether a readers search will likely retrieve your title as relevant. Write a series of possible titles based on the taxonomy of title types listed above, analyzing how each may function in the community of discourse. If tempted by a colon or gerund, re-write the title without these elements to see whether some crucial information is lost. Identify the population and place in the title. Make every word in the title work hard.

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5.

6.

7. 8.

At the end of the day, an author must title the manuscript and hit the send button. This requires commitment. Perfection is the ideal, but an obstacle to done (Williams, 2009, p. 5). Therefore, give your title your best shot, as I have done above (despite two nominalized verbs) and go cheerfully on your way. Judith C. Hays Durham, NC

References
American Medical Association [AMA]. (2007). AMA manual of style: A guide for authors and editors (10th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. American Psychological Association [APA]. (2009). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Demner-Fushman, D., Hauser, S., & Thoma, G. (2005). The role of title, metadata and abstract in identifying clinically relevant journal arti-

cles. Proceedings of the American Medical Informatics Association, Washington, DC. Diers, D., & Downs, F. S. (1994). Colonizing: A measurement of the development of a profession. Nursing Research, 43(5), 316318. Hartley, J. (2005). To attract or to inform: What are titles for? Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 35(2), 203213. Hartley, J. (2007). Theres more to the title than meets the eye: Exploring the possibilities. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 37(1), 95101. Hartley, J., & Betts, L. (2007). The effects of spacing and titles on judgments of the effectiveness of structured abstracts. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(14), 23352340. Hays, J. C. (1989). Voices in the record. Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 21, 200204. Hays, J. C., Davis, J. A., & Miranda, M. L. (2006). Incorporating a built environment module into an accelerated second-degree community health nursing course. Public Health Nursing, 23(5), 442452. Penrose, A. M., & Katz, S. B. (2004). Writing in the sciences: Exploring conventions of scientic discourse (2nd ed.). New Year: Pearson Longman. Wallace, K. G., & Hays, J. C. (1982). Nursing management of chronic pain. Journal of Neurosurgical Nursing, 14, 185191. Williams, J. M. (2009). Style: The basics of clarity and grace (3rd ed.). New York: Pearson Longman.