In a time when content is competing with everyone from a feed of news articles to social media posts and an inbox full of emails, your headline is your biggest chance to catch someone’s attention. Regardless of how amazing your article is, a poor headline can bury it under a pile of other articles on the same topic.

A headline’s shorthand is its column count and type size (or point height). The best way to understand the head’s position in your publication is to consult the hed sked, which is your guide to how much space a story should take up in terms of columns and points.

Headlines need to capture readers’ attention, and they need to be clear about what the article is about. They also serve as a source of information for search engines, so they should be well written and avoid repetition.

The most important part of a headline is the wordplay element, which can be accomplished by using different types of words in combination. Wordplay can be done in any genre, but it works especially well for opinion headlines.

For example, the headline “How to Overcome Writer’s Block” uses a common frustration that creatives face and shows how to overcome it in just three hours a day. This benefits-focused approach is perfect for social media, where a headline must be able to communicate the key benefit in just a few words.

For a personal touch, a first-person headline can use direct quotes from the people being profiled to make them more relatable. Readers want to know they’re reading about real people and this technique helps them connect with the content in a more emotional way.