Bloggers need to learn to write more descriptive titles for their posts. I know it's tempting to hold back the key to your argument and unveil it triumphantly at the end of your essay, but most of the time that desire results in stupid headlines and wastes my time.
I'm not going to pick on anyone, but it should be obvious to any casual student of the blogosphere that most post titles are just filler. You have no idea how many times I've been scanning a blog and seen titles like:
"A surprising twist!"
"More of the same."
"A common mistake."
None of those titles tell me anything about the post, and they generally won't engender enough interest to make me wonder what the "twist" is, what's the "same", or what the "mistake" is about.
I don't have time to read a thousand words before even being able to tell if I'm interested in the topic you're writing about. Get to the point, right up front, and if I want to know more I'll read the rest. Otherwise I'm not going to care -- even when you finally deliver the clever punch-line.
Good point. If I'm not mistaken, however, the preferred spelling is lede.
It also helps the blogger with Google. A post titled "Condi Rice at 9/11 Commission" will get more relevant Google hits than "Brown Sugar Lady Sings."
And its not like it really does end up spoiling it.
If you've got something worth saying, then its worth telling us what its about first.
X: Gosh durn it, I looked up "lede" and just got a bunch of Swedish stuff. No hit on dictionary.com either. So went with "lead", although yeah, I know I've seen "lede". Eh.
Comrade: A good tip for beginning bloggers, perhaps?
I think it's journalistic lingo, which may explain its non-presence in the dictionary.
Like everything else about writing, you can use generic titles as long as you don't overuse them. When I write a comment that I think is worth reposting on my blog, I have a generic numbered title "A Letter to the Paper". That won't necessarily say anything about the subject matter but it will alert the reader that there is a larger story to tell.
It is journalistic lingo, but I believe it's slightly archaic, which also may account for it being unrepresented in the dictionary. My huge Oxford tabletop dictionary has it, which is the only place I've seen it outside of journalism classes.
I'm not that concerned with Google hits, so I tend to go with titles that bemuse the reader rather than being precisely descriptive. Way I see it, if someone doesn't care to take time to read, they're welcome to pass it by.
I am more troubled by blog writing that has been infected with the diseases of Mystery Linkage ("I can't believe this.") and False Familiarity ("Glenn said" when linking to Instapundit, for example) rather than vague titles.
LJR: True, I hate mystery linkage also. I've written about over-familiarity before.