Headline craft

Parent: Writing and Documentation · researched 2026-05-29T19:38:17.493Z· 6 sources · 10 concepts · skill headline-craft

Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. A headline does three jobs at once: it tells the reader what they're about to get, gives them a reason to care, and signals what kind

Overview

Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. A headline does three jobs at once: it tells the reader what they're about to get, gives them a reason to care, and signals what kind of piece it is. [source]

1. The five-times rule and the 80-cent budget

Ogilvy's empirical claim: five times more people read the headline than the body. The practical implication: the headline is where 80% of the work happens. Joanna Wiebe's discipline: never write fewer than 10 headline variants before picking one. Ogilvy demanded 16. [source]

3. The "you-frame" rule

A headline pointed at the reader outperforms a headline pointed at the writer, the product, or an abstract topic. [source]
Topic frame (weak): "The future of distributed databases" [source]
You-frame (strong): "What your replication setup is costing you (and how to fix it)" [source]

4. Numbers in headlines: odd, specific, and not too round

BuzzSumo's analysis of 100M headlines: numerals increase CTR by ~36%. [source]
B2C top performers: 10, 5, 15, 7, 20, 6 [source]
Odd numbers outperform even numbers for curiosity-driven content. [source]
Specific numbers outperform round numbers. "$1,247 saved" beats "$1,200 saved." [source]

5. Curiosity-gap vs declarative headlines

Declarative headlines state the conclusion in the headline itself. Good for hard news, technical posts. [source]
Curiosity-gap headlines withhold the conclusion to drive the click. The failure mode: clickbait - a gap so wide the body can't close it. [source]

7. News vs feature vs op-ed vs SEO headline registers

News headline: Active verb, present tense. "Atlas adds vector search for Voyage embeddings." [source]
Feature headline: Label or question form OK. "The quiet revolution in how databases handle vectors." [source]
Op-ed headline: Argument-forward. "We're thinking about vector search wrong." [source]
SEO headline: Keyword-front-loaded. "Vector search benchmarks: 12 databases compared (2026)." [source]

8. The deck / subhead pairing

A deck does three things: [source]
Expands what the headline could not fit. [source]
Answers the question the headline raised. [source]
Earns the scroll. [source]
Sizing: Heds are 6–10 words. Decks are 10–25 words. [source]

Anti-Patterns

The "we" headline. "We released a new feature today." The reader doesn't care what you did. [source]
The label headline. "Distributed Systems Notes" names a folder, doesn't earn a click. [source]
The pun headline. Ogilvy banned them in 1963 and the data still says he's right. [source]
The bait-and-switch. Headline promises X, body delivers Y. [source]
The under-specified curiosity gap. "What we learned" without a hint of what you learned. [source]

References

Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising (1983). [source]
BuzzSumo headline studies. [source]
Wiebe, Joanna. Copyhackers headline formulas. [source]
PMC, "When curiosity gaps backfire" (2024) [source]

Children

Five-times rule (Ogilvy) (frontier)
AIDA mapped to headlines (frontier)
You-frame rule (frontier)
Headline numbers (BuzzSumo) (frontier)
Curiosity-gap vs declarative (frontier)
Channel-specific length budgets (frontier)
News vs feature vs op-ed vs SEO registers (frontier)
Deck / subhead pairing (frontier)
A/B testing conventions (frontier)
Upworthy/BuzzFeed clickbait lesson (frontier)

Frontier under this node: A/B testing conventions, AIDA mapped to headlines, Channel-specific length budgets, Curiosity-gap vs declarative, Deck / subhead pairing, Five-times rule (Ogilvy), Headline numbers (BuzzSumo), News vs feature vs op-ed vs SEO registers, Upworthy/BuzzFeed clickbait lesson, You-frame rule

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