Writing Guide: Chapters
Essay Titles: Rules For Composing Titles for Your Essay
Coming with an essay title for your paper can be a confusing process, where on the one hand, you know the topic of the paper, and on the other hand, you do not want to simply repeat it. In that regard, the following simple rules might be helpful in determining your essay title.
Essay titles are the first thing readers face when reading an essay, and in that regard, the way the essay title is composed might be the difference between going on with reading or going into reading something more interesting. The following points might be helpful in turning the reader toward the first option:
- Do not use abstract ideas in your essay titles. Pretentious and abstract titles, which do not give an idea of what the essay is about, are not good ideas.
- Do not generalize your essay titles. If the essay is about Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you should not use titles such as Shakespeare in Literature, Literature analysis, etc. A fair balance should be maintained between mentioning specifics and mentioning aspects your essay does not cover.
- Attract the reader. Do not use straight-forward or boring essay titles. The reader should be interested in reading your essay, and thus, you should come up with a title that will make him/her do that.
- Do not copy the essay titles from other works. The latter is specifically true for known literary works and journal articles, where changing a few words to add “personal touch”, will not be a good idea. Be creative in making something on your own.
The aforementioned guidelines are not the only one, where specific requirements can be given in terms of length and format. In that sense, the rules in this article are merely an indication of the approach that should be taken when composing your essay title.
