It’s all about headlines: Tips from three presenters
By Zoe Cabaniss Friloux

    Headline workshops have been among conferencegoers’ favorites at each of the American Copy Editors Society three previous meetings, and this year was no exception.
Newsroom coach Rosalie Stemer started the trend Friday afternoon with “10 Tips for Irresistible Headlines.”
    Among her suggestions for headline writers:
    Consider the essential elements of the story when writing headlines. Be specific and clear, and use vivid nouns and verbs. Avoid starting a headline with a verb, and scan related pages for headlines that look too much alike.
    Saturday morning’s offering was from Hank Glamann, assistant managing editor for editing at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland. His “Hank on Heds” has been a hit at every conference, and this year was no exception.
   Glamann’s showmanship makes him a favored presenter, and both new editors and veterans seemed to appreciate his straightforward approach to the craft.
   His instruction to take a lighter tone with headlines

 on less-serious stories was well received, and the examples he presented were greeted with optimism.
    Readers use headlines to decide which stories are weeded out, Glamann said. To ensure accuracy, he suggests using copy and paste to insert proper names in display type and running spellchecker after writing headlines.
    Glamann warned copy editors to avoid bad breaks in headlines and watch for unintended double meanings. But he also suggested knowing when to break the rules and to have fun.
    To round out the schedule, Saturday afternoon Chris Wienandt of the Dallas Morning News reminded attending copy editors of the pitfalls of cliches. 
    His previous nine-year tenure as a desk chief at the Morning News gives him a knowledgeable perspective.
   Wienandt suggested that copy editors expand their thinking patterns to avoid cliches that make headlines seem tired and uninteresting.

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Zoe Cabaniss Friloux is a copy editor at the Houston Chronicle. She can be reached at zfriloux@copydesk.org.