Article titles are critical for attracting readers. They can also influence the way search engines rank your article and determine whether or not it appears in a results page. Writing an effective title is not easy and can be a challenge for many writers. Here are some things to consider when typing your article title:
The length of the title is important – research suggests that longer titles tend to be downloaded less than shorter ones (Jamali and Nikzad, 2011). Therefore, choose a title that is concise and appropriate for the type of article you have written.
Aim for fewer than 12 words and check the journal’s guidelines for word limits. You can find more information on journal-specific word limits at the APA Publication Manual’s website.
Your title should convey the main point of your research, if you have one. A good title should provide enough information to help the reader understand what the article is about and to draw them into reading your work.
You can use a variety of types of titles to convey the most information to your readers. These include declarative, questioning and descriptive titles.
Descriptive titles are the most common type, and they convey the largest amount of information. They are used in most research articles and are also suitable for literature reviews.
Questions and interrogative titles are less common, but they can be useful when you have a specific question or hypothesis that you want to explore. They may be more appropriate for research articles or other types of papers where you are seeking to explain the scientific or technical aspects of your study.
Your title can also include key words or phrases that are relevant to the content of your article. For example, if you are discussing a certain kind of bacterium or disease, add the term “bacteria” to your title so readers will be able to locate the article quickly.
APA Style has special formatting rules for the titles of sources in your paper, including books, articles, book chapters, reports and webpages. Capitalization, italics and quotation marks are all acceptable ways to format the titles of sources in your APA-style paper.
When you use the same title for different sources in your paper, make sure that each is unique. This is especially important for sources with multiple authors or if you’re citing a large number of sources that are all titled the same way.
The same title should not be used for multiple publications, unless they are in the same category. Using the same title for several different publications can be confusing, and it may lead to your article not being found by search engines.
You should always capitalize the first and last words of your title. In addition to the first and last words, the entire title should be capitalized if it includes proper nouns or genus names, as in our examples below.
Some writers place their titles in section headings to improve the readability of their documents. This can be helpful for documents like handbooks that contain more than one article. When you use section headings, MLA recommends that you number the sections with an Arabic number and a period followed by a space and the section name.
