Key numbers as important as keywords online

11, 60, 110, 140.

No, those aren’t winning lottery numbers or the digits that hold the secret to the island on “Lost.” (Unfortunately.) But they may hold the secret to successful Web headlines, as Dennis Joyce from The Tampa Tribune explained.

140

the number of characters in a tweet
Using Twitter is a great way to practice getting the most important elements of a story in as short a space as possible. It’s not only a way to improve headline-writing skills but also a way to work on writing tighter leads and nut graphs.

110

the number of characters in a tweet if you leave room for the link and/or a retweet
Think cutting it down to 140 characters is tough? Even if you can, you still have work to do. A TinyURL is at least 15 characters, so if you want to link to your story you have to leave room for that. And if you want people to be able to forward a tweet to their followers you have to leave space for “RT @” and your Twitter name. So get those headlines down to 110 characters.

60

the number of characters that AP puts in bold face in its headline feeds and the standard length for Web heds
Shoot for an online headline that’s 60 characters or fewer. Search engines may include only the first 60 to 90 characters in their search results, so a headline on the short end of this scale can only help.

11

the number of characters that scanners see before they make a decision to read the rest
Make those first couple of words count because that’s all some readers get through before moving on to the next line of type. Back into a headline with a less-than-arresting clause and your audience may get no further.