PB1

PB#1

Titles: The Science of Titles

Quick, things that I can see from my desk: Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Blazing World and Other Writings, The Tempest, Dune, Problem Solving with C++, Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros, Probability, PHYS 3 Basic Physics UC Santa Barbara, and The Da Vinci Code. Those were all titles. Now, what do they have in common—besides being outrageously overpriced and displaying poor life choices? They’re short? They’re simple? Catchy? Maybe. Boring? Who’s to say; however, what I am here to say is that titles are cool. Not so much because of their actual “content” per se, but rather because every artist, author, director, journalist, blogger, and creator of any sort had to come up with one. It’s no easy task. Imagine, you pour thousands of gallons of blood, sweat, and tears into your creation, then you are forced to forced to describe it in ten words or less, its sole purpose to pique the interest of every plebeian whose vision happens upon it. It’s kind of insulting, yet everyone from Shakespeare to me had to title their written words. So, how did we do it? 

Well, as you can see, I went for the classic “boring research paper” model for this paper, it’s not final. It follows the age-old *a short, concise intro* : *a slightly more thorough explanations of the subject contained within the words written below this* spiel. I was taught by some teacher that it would make my writing look official. But, that is obviously not the only way to title anything. If you are writing a goosebumps story, you want to title to be simple, yet still haunt the reader into early adulthood. If you are painting a portrait, you either want to title it the person’s name or describe them in an exquisitely awkward way. If you are writing a song for Panic! at the Disco’s “A Fever you Can’t Sweat” album, you want the title to have nothing to do with the song, apparently. What I’m trying to say, is that titles don’t have to have a lot in common to still fall into the genre of titles. The conventions of a title: short, describes what it is, catches the eye(sometimes). These are their guidelines. Artists can either follow these in some capacity or completely ignore them, it’s up to them. That’s what is kind of interesting about analyzing titles as a genre. It is a very obviously defined thing: whatever is first seen by the viewer /reader/ listener. However, they are hard to get right. A good title has to simultaneously catch the eye and intrigue the owner of the eye—easy enough. The catch is that the criteria for this changes significantly per eye, and it is faux pa to lie blatantly in the title for some reason. What makes a title a title in short: has to be a short summary of the content it represents, while both catching the eye and piquing the interest of those who see it.