Tell us where you are located!

Contents of This Chapter

Title Phrasing

Title Page Design and Format

Your comments on this chapter

Search!

Main index

Related Courses:

McMurrey Associates: Courses in Technical Communication

Please click here to help David McMurrey pay his web-hosting bill:
Donate any small amount you can !
Online Technical Writing will remain free.

Title Phrasing

Titles of longer documents such as formal techdocs, user guides, and white papers are sometimes too brief. For example, if a techdoc title were "Report on Plastic Pollution," the document could run more than 300 pages. If it were "Evaluation of Methods of Recycling Plastic," the document might be more manageable.

Of course, you don't want a document to have a title of the one John Milton, the English poet crafted in 1641: Of Reformation of Church Discipline in England: And the Causes that hitherto have hindered it. Two Bookes, Written to a Freind.

Just think of all the things that you could say about each of these topics! Important too is the fact that readers are just not going to know from such titles what you are really going to cover.

Elements of title phrasing

When you craft a title for your document, consider indicating these elements but without creating a title that is a paragraph long:

• Topic: The topic of your document can be similar to those examples above. But don't stop there—you've got more work to do.
• Scope: Scope refers to how broad or how narrow your focus will be on the topic. Scope and overview are not always easy to distinguish. The element overview indicates a general review of some aspect of the topic.
• Overview: As the term is used here, overview refers to an itemization of the main subtopics to be covered. True, it is contradictory to how the term is used to define scope. Not to worry—this is not science. A good example of this use of the term is this: Ebola: Transmission, Symptoms, Treatment. The final three words are the itemization.

Notice that the process of creating a specific, focused title is similar to the process of narrowing a topic, covered elsewhere.

Title phrasing examples

Consider this title: Nanotechnology: Overview of Medical Applications. The giant topic nanotechnology is indeed stated, but notice it is narrowed down to medical applications and a scoping element is applied—overview.

Notice the use of the colon in the preceding example. It enables you to cut down on words. Another possibility is Medical Applications of Nanotechnology: Overview.

Problem title phrasing

A common problem with technical documents involves overly general, vague titles, for example:

Report on Nanotechnology
Report on Ebola
Report on Smart Phones
Report on Solar Power
Report on Graphene

Title Page Design and Format

The chapter on techdoc design presents quite a spartan idea of the title page, shown here on the left. However, plenty of techdocs have lovely images included in the title page, as shown on the right:

---

I would appreciate your thoughts, reactions, criticism regarding this chapter: your response—David McMurrey.

Information and programs provided by mcmassociates.io, 1997-2024.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.