Titles

A question or two about titles:

What kind of a title for a research article do you think is the most effective: a creative one based on a cutesy pun or an interesting play on words OR a descriptive and straightforward but boring one?

What components should go into a good title for an article? How should it be different in case of a book?

There is no fundamental difference in titles between articles and books, but if you have a less than adequate title for the article, the consequences are not great. Most people publish between 1-3 books in their entire life, so you don't want a bad title there. A publisher will also make sure a title is "marketable." Think too about google searches and other ways people find information. You don't want to bury the subject of the book under a lot of verbiage.

Titles like "{In)seminating Modernity: ...." with parentheses or cutesy puns are not my own preference. They were overdone in the 80s and 90s and I think a lot of people are sick of them. The main function of the title is to tell you what the piece of writing is about, so I go for straight-forward and descriptive, but not dull or unwieldy. The second function is to give some idea of what the essay is actually going to say, so a too general title doesn't work. Brevity can be very effective, if you can get an extremely brief title that lets the reader know what the article is going to argue.

A really good pun can work, if it is really, really good. John Kronik had an article "Pascal's Parole," where he plays with the meaning of parole as judicial sentence and speech act. A pun that has been done to death like "cannon / canon" -- well, you get the idea.

Puns or phrases derived from proverbs, "eggcorns," "snowclones," or clichés can be acceptable. "It Was All Greek to Him: Byron and South Mediterrean Nationalism.' It kind of depends on the scholar's own sensibility. I personally wouldn't use that, but I invented this example so you never know.

Here are some of my recent titles:

"The Genealogy of Late Modernism in Spain: Unamuno, Lorca, Zambrano, and Valente."

“Was Lorca a Poetic Thinker?”

“What Lorca Knew: Teaching Receptivity.”

“De la luminosa opacidad de los signos: el texto visual de José-Miguel Ullán.”

“The Persistence of Memory: Antonio Gamoneda and the literary Institutions of Late Modernity.”

“Three Apologies for Poetry: Discourses of Literary Value in Contemporary Spain.”

Nothing too cute. I used the title of a Salvador Dalí painting, the title of a poem ("De la luminosa ..."), a reference to the idea of an "apology for poetry" like that of Sir Philip Sidney, and a play on a Henry James title (What Maisie Knew). To-the-point and descriptive does not always mean boring. I think "Was Lorca a Poetic Thinker" is provocative without being cute.

Not every title needs a colon. Once in a while, write a title that isn't purely formulaic: "Clever Phrase: What the Article is Really About."