June 23rd, 2006
Misleading Post Titles: Just a Rant
While there are times that you are allowed to deliberately use misleading post titles to attract attention (a.k.a. pull in more eyeballs), more often than not, it is an intolerable practice – especially for bloggers that read hundreds of RSS feeds (or used to do so) and thus, especially depend on somewhat accurate post titles to gauge content.
So, when I was digging through one of my RSS feeds recently, I got pretty irritated when I spotted two different titles for the same content – one so misleading that I actually clicked into it after reading the first (correct) one just because I thought I got the news wrong.
- Over 300 Indian students to receive EU scholarships
– The Correct One - EU to Grant Scholarships to 300 Indian Magistrates
– The Misleading One
I’m not sure how “magistrates” entered the title, but there clearly weren’t any Indian magistrates getting scholarships from the EU.
Sheesh. I sincerely think a dictionary would help Focus English News more than higher PageRank at the moment.
P.S.: Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have let something so small get to me. But everyone deserves a rant once in a while…
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3 Comments
June 24th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Great point… and I hope the one people took away from my silly little ruse post. I wanted to show how quickly you can lose credibility if you don’t back up your headline with the actual content.
June 25th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Thanks. I have the same hope, and your post was definitely not “silly” or “little”
.
P.S.: That’s me picking on small things again.
August 7th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
[...] P.S.: Hehe, Easton… like Copyblogger explained on writing ultra-specific headlines, it’s important that the “pledge” in the title, i.e. 10 tips, is fulfilled. Publishing only 9 tips might get you one of my “misleading post title” rants. [...]
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