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Title Editing: Crafting Great Titles
Greetings,
My name is Michael Cook and I manage the Title Editing phase of Titling for Demand Media. This is the crucial stage in which a title is reviewed and deemed grammatically acceptable. However, it goes beyond that.
Our editors are trained to do more than simply make sure that there is subject/verb agreement and correct spelling in every title. We ask them to make a title look better. To make it read aloud naturally and look at home on the front page of any number of web sites. We want to produce titles that anyone would be proud to see displayed on their site’s home page.
For instance: “Prune Rubber Tree Plant” might be edited to “How to Prune a Rubber Tree Plant.” Adding "how to" is allowable when it's fairly obvious that the title's purpose is to teach how to do something.
Another: "Silver Melting Point" is okay as is. But an edit to "The Melting Point of Silver" makes it a little better. We're looking for editors who have that intuitive sense for making any title better than it was without changing any keywords or the original intent.
Those simple edits encapsulate, to a degree, the primary job of a Title Editor –to make a title better without fundamentally changing its intent. We never encourage a title to be edited to the point that its initial purpose is changed in any way, shape or form. As you can see from the above example, the title was simply given what could be called a “cosmetic” edit. Unless a title is already perfect it will need, more often than not, some kind of minor addition that makes it flow better. It could be anything from adding an article, reshuffling the order of words, correcting a misspelled word or incorrect verb tense, changing the casing for special products and any number of other special circumstances.
But that's not the end. To be sure a title is ready for the next stage it will be reevaluated by Title QA to make sure that all crucial edits have been made. If deemed not ready, we’ll send it back for further editing. This assures us that every title will be ready for editorial when they get there.
To help out our editors, we constantly do reviews of the work to offer advice, help and keep an open line of communication going. Additionally, we have two moderators from within the community that also make blog posts and do their best to help out with the large community.
And that is Title Editing.
My name is Michael Cook and I manage the Title Editing phase of Titling for Demand Media. This is the crucial stage in which a title is reviewed and deemed grammatically acceptable. However, it goes beyond that.
Our editors are trained to do more than simply make sure that there is subject/verb agreement and correct spelling in every title. We ask them to make a title look better. To make it read aloud naturally and look at home on the front page of any number of web sites. We want to produce titles that anyone would be proud to see displayed on their site’s home page.
For instance: “Prune Rubber Tree Plant” might be edited to “How to Prune a Rubber Tree Plant.” Adding "how to" is allowable when it's fairly obvious that the title's purpose is to teach how to do something.
Another: "Silver Melting Point" is okay as is. But an edit to "The Melting Point of Silver" makes it a little better. We're looking for editors who have that intuitive sense for making any title better than it was without changing any keywords or the original intent.
Those simple edits encapsulate, to a degree, the primary job of a Title Editor –to make a title better without fundamentally changing its intent. We never encourage a title to be edited to the point that its initial purpose is changed in any way, shape or form. As you can see from the above example, the title was simply given what could be called a “cosmetic” edit. Unless a title is already perfect it will need, more often than not, some kind of minor addition that makes it flow better. It could be anything from adding an article, reshuffling the order of words, correcting a misspelled word or incorrect verb tense, changing the casing for special products and any number of other special circumstances.
But that's not the end. To be sure a title is ready for the next stage it will be reevaluated by Title QA to make sure that all crucial edits have been made. If deemed not ready, we’ll send it back for further editing. This assures us that every title will be ready for editorial when they get there.
To help out our editors, we constantly do reviews of the work to offer advice, help and keep an open line of communication going. Additionally, we have two moderators from within the community that also make blog posts and do their best to help out with the large community.
And that is Title Editing.
Jeremy Reed
Jan 20, 8:24 AM
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KimberleyW
Jan 20, 11:43 AM
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Mike C
Jan 20, 1:14 PM
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