When it comes to advertising, the headline can either make or break your chances of being noticed. The headline is the attention grabbing introduction to any ad and sets the tone for the rest of the ad. As such it has to be completely in sync with what follows in the body copy.

A good headline is not cumbersome or verbose, being ideally between five to twelve words long. In addition, proper punctuation is critical. For instance, too many exclamation marks gives the feeling of being force-fitted.

One approach to writing headlines is to directly talk of the benefits highlighted in the ad in the headline itself. Another approach is to use humor or play on words in such a way as to raise interest and curiosity levels. A mysterious question that causes the reader to want to find out the answer is another great headline route.

Mostly one should stay away from long, complicated words or technical jargons. Clichés are also best avoided unless they are particularly relevant to the ad topic.

On the internet, blog and article headlines need to perform the additional function of being easy to find by automated search engines. Because of this, online articles can kill a writer's creativity to a certain extent. However, in this medium it is better to be boring than be redundant. After all, an ad or article that is not search engine optimized has very little chance of being read. Moreover, average time spent by people on website has been found to be eight seconds, which is just about enough time to read a to-the-point headline.

That being said, magazine articles still allow writers to write creative and classy headlines that inspire the audience to read till the end. It is believed that 8 out of every 10 people read only the headline of an article before moving to the next. In which case, it is more productive if your headline delivers a large part of the message that the body copy also does.

The final step in writing a great headline is to write many of them. A writer should then review all options to choose the best. Better still; get the unbiased opinion of an uninvolved commentator to help make the decision. Once you have found that a particular headline works wonders (for example, a "How To..." headline) try and stick to the same formula on the same format for best results.