How to write titles that both delight and inform, much as chocolate and peanut butter complement each other.

1. Catch ‘emWhile You Can Drawing Readers In Through Titles

2. Inform and Delight Makes your paper more attractive to readers Identifies your paper’s focus Establishes your tone and style

3. Inform What do you expect to be the subject of these papers? Use of Beneficial Microbacteria in Dairy Products Second-Life and Tween Social Cliques Aestheticism, Nabokov and Lolita Daily Life in Pre-Columbian Native America Analysis of Cap-and-Trade Programs in Southeast Asia Worker Art from 1920-1938 But, then again, how exciting are you to read these papers?

4. How To Inform Include key words for that topic: “Pre-Columbian” “Cap-and-Trade” “Microbateria” Identify your paper’s scope: “Nabokov” “Southeast Asia” “1920-1938”

5. Delight How do you feel reading these titles? “Oh, Brave New World that Has Such People In’t” It’s a Frog’s Life The Grossest Thing in The Fridge What Does It Mean? But, then, how much do you know about the topic of these papers?

6. How To Delight Use a quote from the work that is meaningful to your argument “Oh Brave New World” comes from The Tempest Ask a question that you’ll later answer (and that your audience cares about) “What does it mean?” Shock the Audience a Little “The Grossest Thing in the Fridge” Relate the title to songs, movies, or proverbs “Frog’s Life” is similar to phrase “it’s a dog’s life.”

7. Inform and Delight Combine both elements for the best titles Do Tweens Form Social Cliques in Second-Life ? The Sanctuarie is become a plaiers stage”: Chapel Stagings and Tudor “Secular” Drama It’s a Frog’s Life: Extinction Rates of Rainforest Frogs 1990-2009 American Indian Studies: Intellectual Navel Gazing or Academic Discipline?

8. Notice a trend? Colons are your friend! Don’t be afraid to use a subtitle after a colon. You can put delight on one side and inform on the other “The Vinyl Ain’t Final”: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Culture What does It Mean to Be an American? The Dialectics of Self-Discovery in Baldwin’s “Paris Essays” (1950-1961)

9. Practice Try writing a title that combines the key terms and scope of your paper with: A question A quote A shock A reference