Let’s call it titulophobia, the fear of writing titles—holding off until the last minute to slap one on, succumbing to writing “Untitled,” or just slinking your paper to your professor with a blank space on top. But a title is a name, a heading, a header, a lead, an identity for your work. It is a greeting and invitation, not only to the reader—a door, a guide, a here-I-am and come-with-me—but to you, as the writer, as well. I love writing titles: they initiate my writing process—they focus, inspire, and anchor me. They give me direction and dispel my anxiety.
Writing titles for essays on literature is the easiest of all titlings. There are three components to a title on literary essays, all meant to also help you enter the great conversation about literature. (1) The Snippet; (2) The Approach; (3) The Title; and (4) The Author. These components will also enable those who are searching for inspiration, as for example on the Modern Language Association search engine, to find your essay once it’s published.
(1) The Snippet
To title this post, for which I Shakespeare’s “The Rape of Lucrece” for my illustrations, I went to an online Shakespeare Concordance site and searched his use of the word “title.” I chose an early one on the list, from All’s Well That Ends Well, “To be a great part of your title.” To wit, a great part of a title for an essay on literature—and the first—is a snippet from the work on which you are writing. And don’t stress about it. Here, I started with a subject—writing titles. In most cases, you can start with a catchy snippet that fascinates you from the literary work. Whether you start with the snippet or start with an idea and find a snippet that reflects it—make it brief and catchy:
Here are some more examples from Shakespeare’s “The Rape of Lucrece”:
“His falchion on a flint”
“the grim lion fawneth”
“Have done, quoth he”
“men have marble, women waxen minds”
“Tarquin’s everlasting banishment”
(2) The Approach
In other posts, we will consider in more depth how to identify critical approaches and themes you want to assume. For now, the snippet might be enough to spark your point of view.
After the closed quote marks of the snippet, insert a colon: which points to the second part of your title. In as few words as possible, embody your approach. In my title above, I wrote “"To be a great part of your title": Headings into Shakespeare.” To include your approach is to make your point of view—you—literally, “a great part of your title.” The snippet you choose already speaks for you—but writing your theme/approach makes it explicit. This is the place you might write something clever, play on words, pun, as I attempted to do in my title. Here are the approaches for the Shakespeare snippets from “The Rape of Lucrece”:
“Beauty itself doth of itself persuade”: Blaming the Victim in…
“His falchion on a flint”: Military Violence and Bonding in…
“the grim lion fawneth”: Bestial Imagery in…
“Have done, quoth he”: Silencing the Woman…
“men have marble, women waxen minds”: Belenky’s Ways of Knowing and…
“Tarquin’s everlasting banishment”: A Queer Eye on…
Since the word “Rape” will be referenced in Shakespeare’s title, it would be redundant to insert it in the approach segment of your title.
(3) The Title
Identify the title of the literary work. To the examples above, append
“The Rape of Lucrece”
(4) The Author
Since only Shakespeare wrote a major work entitled “The Rape of Lucrece,” it is not necessary to insert his name in these titles. Nevertheless, if someone were searching broadly for “Shakespeare” in a database, they might not access your work. So, you might include his name as in this example from above:
“Tarquin’s everlasting banishment”: A Queer Eye on Shakespeare’s
“The Rape of Lucrece”
Works Cited
Cover Art: Catchy Titles
Texts
Belenky, Mary Field, et al, Eds. Women's Ways of Knowing. New York: Basic, 1986.
Shakespeare, William. “The Rape of Lucrece.”
Because I Can Teach
Dr. Rich,
ReplyDeleteThis was another informative post! I am also one who enjoys titles. I feel as though it is the first attention grabber whether it be for a paper or a book. The way you have set up our title for our first paper is very clever. Also, including many examples for us to reference has sparked ideas for my paper. I never thought to include a piece of the work into my title which is great because I enjoy having a play on words or something clever as my title. I tend to write my title last so it can almost be a summary or focus point for what my paper is talking about; however, I can also see why it would be easier to write my title first because I can go back and remember what I intend to speak about within my paper. I think this blog post along with “Chew upon this”: digesting your quotes” has made me feel a little more at ease with writing our first paper because in the beginning I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to elaborate on the stanzas that I chose. I appreciate this post for giving me more incite on what I should and can do when it comes to writing, not only in this class, but in general.
Janaya- ENG3215*4
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDr. Rich,
ReplyDeleteI am one of those people that wait until my essay or story is complete to put a title on it. I often have problems writing titles because I find it hard to express what I want in such a short way. I usually work on the title last because I often change the ideas of my essays or stories as I am writing them, and then the title no longer fits my work. I would like to be more creative and expressive with my titles, but I often find them to be lacking. I liked the way that you tried to provide students with different ways to come up with creative titles because I know I am not the only one that struggles with it. I think the Snippet method could be very helpful as it stems back to the original piece while allowing for some creative wiggle room. I feel like the part that I really lack while creating titles is what you described as “The Approach”. I think that this step is harder for me because I have not used the Snippet method in the past, and that method is what this one builds upon. I do enjoy puns and clever word plays, but I find my creativity lacking by the end of my essay, and because I leave the title for last, it gets the least amount of attention. As I go forward in writing future essays or stories I will try to give more time and attention to my titles because they are what reels the reader in.
-Jennifer Stavole
This post broke down how to spark ideas of a title of a story or paper that I’m writing about. I do think of a title before I go more in depth of what I’m writing about because, that does help to stay focus on what I’m writing about in the first place. I think too hard on what to name the title because as other writers and authors think, it has to be something catchy and interesting to have readers pick up the paper or book for them to read. I’m like that with reading things. The title has to catch my eye to grab my attention. The snippet and approach together creates the whole point of view what the story is about before reading. The example of Shakespeare’s “The Rape of Lucrece” instantly tells that there is something terrible of a woman being raped and that is part of the story. Reading that title has the readers attention to think how did it happen throughout the story and how does it end.
ReplyDeleteNaming titles for stories is a challenge because I want to think of fancy words that sounds good for someone to say, “Hmm… sounds interesting.” Reading books I can be picky because I judge a book by it’s cover, when I shouldn’t. Titles and pictures has to fascinate me to read what the writer or author wrote about. The other examples of Snippet, Approach, The Title, and The Author have great ideas how creative to use words to the point of the story. I like the Approach “Beauty itself doth of itself persuade”: Blaming the Victim in…” because it catches me at the end blaming the victim, and I want to know why. The Author use “Tarquin’s everlasting banishment”: A Queer Eye on Shakespeare’s “The Rape of Lucrece” is creative because is has a punishment from the authors story title.
Tia Taylor
DeleteWhen I’m writing papers the hardest part for me is coming up with the title. For some people, it is the easiest part that they can just think of one but for me it takes a while to find the right title so I usually end up just writing the question or prompt as the title. I hear a tip from a fellow peer in a class one time though and I will use that tip sometimes if I’m really struggling to find a title. In my opinion, I find the title to not be as important as the content in the paper. The title kind of just is there giving you an idea of content and not supposed to give anything away. as in Shakespeare he will give you a title that basically tell you a foreshadowing of what is to come in that work that you are reading. Sometimes knowing who the author is and knowing their works can help with the title and deciphering what the work is about. Most authors have good titles and have foreshadowing intents in their titles so you can prepare for what is to come from reading it. As is seen in Shakespeare’s Rape Of Lucrece you read the title and you can be in a way prepared for that part to come in a way and have a understanding of how it pulls the story together. In this explanation, I understand that I am being hypocritical of myself and started saying titles are not important but I am bad at them.
ReplyDeleteKathleen Weideli
Dr. Rich,
ReplyDeleteThis was a very informative piece about writing titles. I believe having an interesting title is so important when writing a paper because the title is the first thing readers look at, and it is usually the title that makes them decide if they want to read the book or paper. Coming up with a creative title has always been a struggle for me, and something I end up doing last without much thought, causing my titles to be boring or redundant. I like the way that you broke down writing the title into different parts, which is something I have never thought of doing. It makes it a lot easier to come up with a creative title when it is broken down like this and I'm not trying to think of the whole thing at once. I also find it interesting how you use the quote to start it off and then put the approach to the piece. Usually my titles will be a short sentence/phrase that I have come up with on my own to give a look at what my piece will be about. Including a quote from the literature work itself and then writing the approach is a better idea because it grabs the reader's attention and gives them a look into the poem/literature that you are writing about. I do not think I will use this title format for every paper I write, however I will think of it and begin planning my titles out more and using quotes from the literature I am writing my paper on.
Danielle Piescor
I am the absolute epitome of titulophobia: I HATE giving my pieces titles. There’s no specific reason for it either, I just get anxious putting a title on my work (it’s not good enough, it sounds dumb, it’s too ‘basic’), but I know that they are essential to giving a piece its own identity. Reading this post will really help me grow as a writer, by learning how to write solid titles for my pieces. After reading the blog post, I took note of the four part title model: Snippet, Approach, Title, Author. I never thought about using a piece of a quote from the piece to title my work but it’s a great way to integrate the piece into your paper because it gives you a concept to work from. I love the idea of using a clever play on words, as I am a very sarcastic person by nature so this is a perfect opportunity for me to utilize my strengths.
ReplyDeleteBy doing something similar to this, it gets the audience interested in your paper and excited to see what you are going to write about. It seems simple, but reading a title such as “To be a great part of your title”: Headings into Shakespeare is far more interesting than seeing “How to Title Your Papers”. If your audience is excited, it will make your paper a much easier read and less of a drag to get through. A title also helps your piece stand out: there can be thousands of papers written about Shakespeare, but a title that is unique and interesting can set your paper out from the rest.
Katie Lewandowski
Wow, Dr. Rich. I was a true fan of this blog post this week. It may sound weird but I for one enjoy writing titles for my works because it’s where I get to show the reader a bit of my personality. In addition to that, reading this post brought me back to a time in my childhood. Picture an eight-year-old Taizha in her third grade English class. My teacher Mrs. Bruno was teaching my class about the importance of having a title. I vividly remember her saying all writings should have one, except for letters. Reading your blog post was also insightful and is something that will stick with me. Before you mentioned the existence of this post, I assumed you wanted us to be just as creative in our titles as we will be for our papers. After reading this post, I now know it’s much more than that. I want to be honest though, I am a bit confused by the setup but hopefully, you will be able to divulge a little bit more during our next group session. With the snippet, do we simply pick a line from the poem that best portrays our theme? Or gives an example of the said theme? Or simply something witty Shakespeare has written? I have no issues with the remaining steps and feel confident about my paper and our upcoming workshop. The approach aspect of the paper has my wheels turning and is opening me up to some ideas.
ReplyDeleteTaizha Blue
The title of an essay is the first thing the reader sees. A title can be a person's name, it can be the name of a restaurant or a name of book. So, it is important to choose a nice one. Think about it when you are walking along a busy boardwalk on a sunny Thursday, browsing for a restaurant to eat at, you are more likely to choose a restaurant that has a big sign in the front of it with a title that stands out.
ReplyDeleteThe words Mr., and Mrs. are titles also. If you do not address someone with the proper title, he or she will become upset. Image calling your teacher who is a man, Mrs. Cansdale instead of Mr. It may be insulting to him and he might upset with you.
Likewise, If you are in a library searching for a new book to read during your summer vacation from school, you are more likely to choose a book that has a title that catches your eyes.
In the blog you mentioned that there is a fear of writing titles and someone might wait until the last minute to put one on their paper. I think at times I wait until the end to choose a title for something I am working on because I don’t know what I am going to talk about yet. So the title comes a little later after I have talked about what I wanted to say.
A colon is an interesting tool to use as well, It can act as a pointing finger. Once you choose a quote from what you are working on, you can insert a colon after it and define what that quote means to you.
ReplyDeleteI still looking for a proper title for my Shakespeare poem paper, but this blog has given me some ideas on where to start. I always found the personal best strategy for making a accurate title is to save that step for last after the paper is done. That way you have a solid grasp on what the paper is about and can give it a title that reflect what you are writing about. A good title can instantly tell you what the paper is going to be about. It serves as a short of snapshot to draw the reader in and make him or her want to read through the rest of the book. This three-part structure to a title perfect for making title that are a nice blend of informative and creative enough to drawn in an audience and help them understand what they are getting into. Titles are always the first thing a reader should see and as the saying goes first impression are everything. A good title can make the reader want to read, while a bad one can kill any interest in even the best papers.
Alas, Dr. Rich! By Jove, you've done it again. The first brave educator instructs its students to put the cart before the horse. Title first! It is also a great, helpful Blog that reinforces your teachings regarding our first Shakespearean lesson, "The Rape of Lucrece." The three components to aide us into our literary essays and enter a great conversation about literature: (1) The Snippet, (2) The Approach, (3) The Title, and (4) The Author is indeed on point. Your insight is insightful enough to gleam from and follow along. For I cannot recall the last time, I wrote the title before I "slap one on, succumbing to writing," a literary piece of work. I find it has abetted me to write what I would consider "a better paper." And because of such a great idea, I now have my "catchy title" that I cannot wait to see if it measures up to the "Headings into Shakespeare."
ReplyDelete