How to Title an Essay Properly

How to Title an Essay

Essay titles speak volumes about content of a paper. Title serves as a stepping stone or a pitfall to your essay. If you wish to succeed with your paper, take titling as an important step. This is because title is the first part that a reader sees, thus it is worthwhile to make it perfect.

Titling has been described as one of the most essential parts of an essay writing process. To craft the perfect heading takes time and diligence. In this post, you will learn about how to title an essay properly. A well-written title produces that “wow effect” that attracts readers.

Selecting a title is more than putting keywords together, it requires creativity. As a masterpiece needs an investment of hours so also does a perfect title. To choose the right title that makes people want to read your essay is vital to students, authors, freelancers.

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Components of Essay Title

The different types of an essay have the same pattern or formula for writing their titles. For every example from good essay titles, components are the same and they include:

  • It must have a Catchy Hook: The hook acts like a bait that draws readers. It creatively introduces an essay to readers. Any good title must grab your attention immediately. The role of heading is more like that of icing on a cake. The icing presents cake to be beautiful to people.

Ensure the title grabs your readers’ attention enough to start reading this essay. Be that as it may, do not work hard in developing a great title while content does not reflect creativity or hard work invested in it. Put more work in arriving at a great hook when crafting the title.

For example, Last journey: the tales of African migrants on the Mediterranean Sea. The phrase ‘last journey’ grabs attention since it portrays tragedy.

  • It requires Topic Keywords: In a good title, topic keyword describes the essay in question. It identifies the concept under review. This component answers the question ‘What?’
  • It must contain Focus Keywords: This component of good titles for essays tells the place and time being reviewed i.e. it answers the question ‘When?’ or ‘Where?’ The two keywords mentioned here make a title more professional by supplying more information about the topic to the reader.

For better understanding let us analyze a simple title:

Classrooms without walls: Virtual Reality learning in the computer age.

Catchy Hook – Classrooms without walls

Topic Keywords – Virtual Reality learning

Focus Keywords – Computer age

Rules on how to title an essay

Useful Rules of Creating Interesting Headlines

Creating an interesting title can be an intriguing yet daunting task. However, there are certain rules to base your title creation on. Here are the basics of how to come up with a title for an essay:

  • Title every piece of writing: In the process of writing create exciting headings to give the paragraphs an identity.
  • The title must bear the theme of the text: One important rule that you follow strictly is to choose a heading that summarizes the essay. There is nothing more annoying than having one that does not relate to the content of the article. Avoid misleading your readers if your essay should be successful.
  • Do not be myopic about the subject: Your lecturer or professor might have given you a topic to work with; this is called the working title. Do not focus on it instead of writing down options that describe more than a topic. Use it to start your research and writing, and when you conclude, you can then creatively change the topic to arrive at your desired example.
  • Capitalize all words with certain exceptions: Capitalize the first letters of every word in the title but do not capitalize pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions for instance How to Title an Essay. If you are presenting everything in capital letters, then all should be in capital letters.
  • Avoid underlining the title: Since topics come in boldface, underlining it will amount to over emphasis. Some authorities say if you must underline, do not bold.
  • Review the final version of the title: Do not forget to do a quick review of the final version of the heading. Check for grammar, structure, spelling and so on. Re-read it in view to detect if heading did justice to the essay. Confirm if the topic is catchy enough to attract attention. Check other keywords or phrases that can convey the message better to the reader. Ensure you insert quotation mark where you use other’s quotes.
  • When using a colon in your title follow the rules: Since we are dealing with rules here, let us talk about the colon rule. When you have two eye-catching topics, separate them with a colon.
  • Adapt examples of international writers: You can draw ideas off famous writers’ essays. Read essays of great writers check out their styles, borrow and adapt their ideas or techniques to give your piece of a professional look it requires.

Read Also: How to Write an Article Review: Guide with Examples

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How to Create Essay Headlines

Now that we have touched the basics, read about how to create a title for essay. The steps described below will afford you the ability to craft creative titles for essays like a professional. Do read on to discover more:

1. Write your essay as the first step but the title as the last: The first step is to write it in the first place and for this, you may consider using an essay writing service. You should form the content that the writer develops argument or view of the perfect topic. However, you can have a working title to start with, but later you can change it for a better one that attracts your attention based on the content. The type of essay determines what kind of heading you would give it.

For instance, a descriptive essay should have a different style compared to an informative or argumentative essay. After writing the essay, put on your thinking cap to craft an impressive headline that matches contents of an essay. Writing heading after everything else saves a lot of time.

2. Use your thesis: When reading a heading informs you why you are reading it. Since headline comes last, you can start creating thesis statement and writing the purpose of an essay. It is practical to take part in creation of thesis statement.

3. Use popular phrases and clichés: You can use popular phrases as a hook to generate essay title ideas. These phrases make a fantastic topic. You can also adapt clichés to work for you when crafting the perfect heading.

4. Use or paraphrase a quote: You can never go wrong with quotes from a famous actor or author. Either the full quote or parts will be effective, and yet it still depends on what format the essay will take, e.g., if your essay is about a book or song you can quote from them.

5. Note the tone of the essay: the tone of the essay dictates the pace of creating a perfect headline, e.g. a descriptive essay will have a different one compared to an argumentative essay. Ensure you are very cautious here because, the best way of losing readers interest it to use the wrong tone in an essay or article. For instance, when writing a serious article, avoid using entertaining or humorous titling style.

6. Simplicity is the name of the game: When crafting a perfect title, do not opt for complex sentences, make it simple. Using complex sentences to create a headline will work against the essay. For the post or article to be catchy and easy to read, it must have a simple heading.

7. You are unique, give the title your voice: In creating a great essay title, embrace uniqueness. Avoid copying other authors’ title verbatim; even if you use their titles make them yours. You might be surprised to find many other writers having the same title as you.

8. The right word always: Try to use the appropriate word when creating an essay title. Wrong words damage your article in every sense. For instance, when writing a technical essay, use technical terms that are peculiar to that field of study.

9. Do not use jargons or abbreviations: Abbreviations can be shortening of words, contractions, initials or acronyms. Avoid the use of jargons or abbreviations in the final draft. Instead of abbreviating words, use to full word, e.g. instead of saying: How to ride a bike; say: How to ride a bicycle.

10. Draw your title from the summary of the essay: A summary gives a bird’s eye view of an essay that is why after writing it, draft a summary. Read it to yourself, and from it, you can start creating headings.

Mistakes to Avoid

Here are common mistakes you should not be caught doing when creating good titles for essays:

  • Avoid negative themes: Try and avoid topics relating to sensitive issues, unethical or immoral subjects. For example, in academic work, you cannot write positively about drugs, prostitution, murder, masturbation, etc.
  • Avoid making your negative past public: Your negative past belongs to you as a student, they do not belong to your writings. However, if you have examples of lessons you learned from such negative past that you wish to add, do it but avoid being detailed about it.
  • Do not ask the wrong questions: If you fail to ask right questions that are relevant to the field of study, you risk choosing wrong topic.
  • Avoid being too personal: As earlier revealed bad past belongs to you, avoid exposing them in your essay. Keep your essay professional by not adding your own life into it. Your readers are not interested in knowing how many ladies you have dated in your lifetime.
  • Do not miss the tutor’s requirement: Ensure you understand your professor’s requirement if you don’t, you might write end up choosing a wrong topic. It might earn you a bad grade and result in frustration and waste of time.
  • Avoid taking an offensive angle: In writing an essay, do not try to be rebellious with your topic. Stare clear offensive topics like religion, abortion, politics and controversial issues in general.

Read also: How to write a film review 

Essay Title Examples

Now that we have addressed how to create headlines and errors to avoid, let us now relax and see examples of essay title ideas to help you in creating yours:

  • Artificial Intelligence and a future of technology.
  • How to use modern technology to solve ancient problems.
  • Virtual Reality and possibility of time travel.
  • North and South Korea: The tale of two countries after years of conflict.
  • The position of mathematics in a history of humanity.
  • How to make it big in Real Estate Business.
  • How to raise responsible children in the 21st century.
  • How to manage your business like a mafia manager.
  • How to become a millionaire in a computer age without a physical business.
  • E-commerce: Multi-million-dollar virtual business empire.

Tips on How to Title an Essay

If you want to put pen to paper without delays poised to write your essay headline, here are our tips to help with how to make a good title for essay:

  • Choose one sentence from your draft and set it up as a tentative heading.
  • Creatively change a tentative headline chosen from the draft.
  • When starting your essay popular question words like What is a descriptive essay, Where, When or Who.
  • You can never go wrong with How and Why questions.
  • Insert your header above the main topic.
  • Adapt any famous book, album headline, movie, song, etc that fits an essay perfectly.
  • If a heading you arrive at looks too simple or apparent, twist it in the best possible way.
  • Join two simple headings together to get a 2-in-1 title.
  • Check a title to see if it appeals to you.
  • Write more options of a title to see which grab your attention most.
  • If you have problems with choosing for yourself, do ask another person.
  • You can play around with a two-word, three-word, four-word, and five-word titles.
  • Creatively adapt clichés in your titling.
  • No matter how compelling title seems to you, it must not fail tests of grammar and spellings.
  • Do not use complicated words to try to show-off; you will end up losing readers during this process.

Read Also: Guide on Writing an Excellent Classification Essay

Conclusion

Crafting an interesting title is not for faint-hearted or lazy writers, it takes dedication. As an essay writer, you are like a baker baking a wedding or birthday cake. After removing brown cake from an oven, baker with his or her thinking cap on creates an awesome sugarcraft. The sugarcraft made with icing will give cake this beautiful appearance it requires.

The cake without an icing looks unattractive though delicious when tasted but it is unappealing without the icing. Similarly, an essay with good contents without a topic is like that cake. Hence make your article attractive and appealing by decorating it with a perfect title. Now that you know how to title an essay, put your knowledge to use - craft one now or use our essay title generator. Good luck!

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