Why Titles Are Important
11 Jun
There are a lot of writing sites that actively enforce proper capitalization as well as good style rules when it comes to titles. In large part, such rules are enforced due to aesthetics. Having a forum full of properly formatted titles is a lot like having a clean, organized room. Yet, I’ve always thought it’s a bit misguided.
For one, an author may have a perfectly good reason for not following the proper style rules.  The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner is one such example. There, the author based the title of the book off the name of a daycare, which misspelled ‘happyness’ in its name, that he used to leave his son at during the day.
But for another, the title is a good indicator of how an author feels about his own work. Whenever I see a literary work on the Young Writers Society with a shoddy title, I know the author does not care about the work he posted. Plus, if you can’t bother to write a proper title – something that only takes a minute – then what does that say about the likely quality of the work?
And that is why the title is so important: it’s the first indicator to the reader of how the author feels about his work and about the quality of the work. That indicator is extremely important as it lets the reader know whether or not to spend the time necessary to read and review the work in question (which is why YWS doesn’t actively enforce rules concerning titles of works). So if you’re not spending time on your title, you may want to rethink your priorities.
Even if all you do is come up with a working title, that helps. The working title can help give an idea of the story, eve if you don’t feel it’s perfect yet.
It beats having to wade through a sea of “untitled”s I believe.
Just don’t make the title in all-caps, please.
*like*
It’s completely true that I do get turned off by some titles like the ones you describe above. However, doesn’t that fit into the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Isn’t it true that books named idiotic names can actually turn out to be wonderful pieces of literature? Just saying.
Yeah! Good titles are really important, they atract the reader and makes him/her want to read the book. Nice blog!
Oh, and… lol Rosey!