A correspondent on one of my favorite tech-community mailing lists, Triangle Internetworkers, found something wrong with this New York Times headline, providing a fine example for our class discussions of headline writing -- for print and for the Web. I've also tacked on some notes about knowing your audience... and examples of a couple of very different writing styles. Here's the headline:
Do you see the problem?
Probably not, unless you're a computer programmer or read a lot of computer industry magazines and blogs. But some readers of the Times are or do.
In the computer industry, the word "developer" can mean "a programmer." And a word in front of "developer" might tell you the developer's preferred language or specialty. There probably are or have been millions of "Fortran developers."
In this case, the headline might say to some people "John Backus, who wrote programs in Fortran," which wouldn't be very special at all. What it means is, "John Backus, who made early computers easier to program by developing Fortran..."
The Times writer put a lot more "between the commas" of the obit's lead sentence:
"John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore."
If you search Google News for "Backus and Fortran" you'll see some of the headlines other papers and computer industry publications used. There's never just one way to tell a story. Just changing the word "developer" to "creator," "pioneer" or "inventor" was enough for some headline writers, although "inventor" is awkward word when describing team projects.
A less-tech audience, however, might include people who never heard of Fortran, which paved the way for many more recent programming languages. How about this?
That was better for non-techies, but it's a bit vague about his contribution to the field.
My advice on headlines is often to leave out the name of a person who isn't well-known to the average reader. Obituary headlines are often an exception; a specific name ensures that family and friends scanning the obit page won't miss the story.
A "news obit" for someone like John Backus, however, could postpone his name until the first -- or even the second -- sentence of the story. The headline could combine some of the ideas above:
IBM computer programming pioneer dies at 82;
Developed Fortran, first popular computer language
People interested in computers, programming or the history of technology might read that story. That headline would also have plenty of "key words" for search engines like Google to index: "IBM," "programming," "Fortran" -- but not the ones most people will search for if they are looking for the John Backus obituary, his name.
So there's another reason to keep his name in that headline: "Search Engine Optimization." To read more about it, go to Google, type "boring headline" into the search field, and click "I'm feeling lucky." Honest. (Unless something has changed, you should land at this Times story.)
Editors believe that readers appreciate action-words and clever headlines. Some headline writers flirt with the tools of poetry: rhyme, metaphor, alliteration, teeth-grinding puns... Google, however, won't care.
Metaphors and puns obviously don't work with search engines. But good subject-verb-object heads are hard work. They risk being ridiculously vague ("Board Examines Budget") for humans or search engines, or they get too long for the average newspaper column, as in "Manager Finds Decapitated Torso in Striptease Nightclub."
That last one, of course, is based on a New York Post's piece of tasteless tabloid page one poetry, "Headless Body In Topless Bar." The graphic language makes up for the implied passive verb "found." The unusual combination of "headless" and "topless" is also good enough for Google. Don't believe me? Feed Google.com the words "headless" and "topless" and hit "I'm feeling lucky."
The most poetic headline on a story about Mr. Backus's death wasn't from any tabloid... It was the one for this column by author and public radio host Garrison Keillor:
Google won't care that there's a tip of the hat to Knoxville native James Agee in that headline. Google won't put that story at the top of its list based on "key words" in the headline (no "Backus" or "Died" or "Fortran"). But the story might move up on the list if other Web pages link to it as something worth reading. I think it is.
Like one of his narrative tales from Lake Wobegon, the essay starts with a story about the good, or not so good, old days -- more than 300 words of nostalgic narrative winding toward what I found to be a moving tribute. I don't want to steal the punchline. Please click on that headline and read the whole article for yourself to get a feeling for his style.
At the end, if you're not sure what passage I'm talking about, or if the Chicago Tribune takes it offline, here's a copy:
"...John W. Backus, who died last week at 82, the man who led the team at IBM that created the programming language Fortran in the early '50s, a giant step toward harnessing the computer and making it work. While the militants of his day stewed over the danger of rock 'n' roll and Reds in the State Department, Mr. Backus' team of young math nerds toiled away in Manhattan and took small, decisive steps toward the future...
"There are thousands of statues of lousy generals and blowhard statesmen and enormous temples erected for the worship of presidents, and not much recognition of people such as Mr. Backus who did the work that actually made life better."
Here's another question for possible class discussion. It's a bit off-topic, but in a way it's about being off-topic. If you were Garrison's editor, would you have tried to talk him out of the adjectives "lousy" and "blowhard" in that last sentence? Is its sentiment weaker or stronger without them?
5:26:39 PM 
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