An excellent series of articles on the writer’s craft from Lorelei Lingard in the magazine Perspectives in Medical Education

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are lots of mediocre articles about writing, but fewer excellent ones. An article by Lorelei Lingard in Perspectives in Medical Education on April 8, 2015 (Volume 4, Number 2, pages 79 and 80) is titled The writer’s craft and introduces a series. She has a PhD in rhetoric and is a professor. Articles in the series cover topics ranging from titles, to verbs, to sentences to paragraphs.

 

One on April 9, 2015 Volume 4 Number 2, pages 53 and 54 is titled Enlisting the power of the verb. A second on January 26, 2016 (Volume 5 Number 1, pages 39 to 41) is titled Get control of your commas. A third on May 23, 2016 Volume 5 Number 3, pages 179 to 181 is titled Bonfire red titles. A fourth on December 8, 2016 (Volume 6, Number 1, pages 51 to 53) is titled Mastering the Sentence. A fifth on April 10, 2019 Volume 10 Number 2, pages 98 to 100 is titled From semi-conscious to strategic paragraphing. A sixth on December 18, 2019 (Volume 18, Number 9, pages 57 to 59) is titled Pace, pause & silence: Creating emphasis & suspense in your writing. A seventh on November 3, 2021 (Volume 10, Number 6, pages 347 to 351) is titled When English clashes with other languages: Insights and cautions from the Writer’s Craft series. And an eighth on March 8, 2022 (Volume 11, Number 4, pages 228 to 231) is titled Writing for the reader: Using reader expectation principles to maximize clarity.

 

For example, in Bonfire red titles Lorelei says:

 

“….A title is like a front door: it serves as advertising for what’s inside your research paper. Have a look at the last title you wrote for an academic manuscript. Is it a red door or a white one? Does it draw readers into your work or encourage them to walk by?

 

Titles must achieve two goals: quickly grab the reader and faithfully describe the paper. This likely explains our common addiction to the ‘colon title,’ in which what precedes the colon is meant to be catchy and what follows is meant to be descriptive.”

 

The image of a writer was adapted from one at the Library of Congress.

 

 

A YouTube video ranking almost two-dozen common public speaking tips

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today my Google Alert on public speaking led me to a 25-minute YouTube video from November 7, 2025 by Vinh Giang mistitled Ranking Every Public Speaking & Communication Tip! He ranked each of those 23 from best to worst on a seven-point scale, as I have shown above in a version of the table he developed in the video.

I agree that “Imagine the audience naked” is one of the worst tips. But he ranked “Avoid filler words completely” at the third level from best, while I regard it as some of the worst advice – as is to “Just be yourself.”   

You never could rank EVERY TIP without making a video that ran forever! A thoughtless video title is just as bad as a thoughtless speech title.  

 

There also is another version titled The Best (AND Worst) Public Speaking Advice RANKED. 

Would you like to write headlines like those in The Wall Street Journal?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a recent article by Tom Corfman at Ragan on April 15, 2025 titled How to write headlines like The Wall Street Journal. His five tips are:

 

“Two-sentence headlines or colon constructions are best when there’s an element of tension to play up.

 

Behind/inside headlines (starting a headline with these come-hither words) are for when we’re actually showing readers something revelatory.

 

Question headlines should ‘pose big, existential questions, ones that everyday people are actually asking.

 

How/Why headlines work best when we’re doing explanatory journalism.

 

Use a quote in a headline when it’s ‘such a standout that the story couldn’t live without it.’ “

 

Five headlines from their February 1, 2025 issue are:

 

Crash victims mourned amid search for answers.

President threatens to widen trade war.

Was that a Van Gogh at the garage sale?

Inflation remains just above Fed target.

Trump’s tariff plans risk jolting economy.

 

Another article by Ann Wylie at Wylie Communications in April 2021 is titled Stop it with the ing-ing headlines (Examples!) She has the following quote:

 

“Barney Kilgore, the legendary editor of The Wall Street Journal, once wrote: ‘If I see ‘upcoming’ slip in[to] the paper again. I’ll be downcoming and someone will be outgoing.’ “

 

On June 15, 2022 I blogged about how Speeches and slides need headlines – not just titles.  And on April 6, 2021 I had another post titled Your speech needs a great headline -not just a title.

 

The cartoon of a man reading a newspaper was adapted from one at OpenClipArt. 

 

 

Two cartoons today are related to speech titles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 6, 2023 F Minus cartoon by Tony Carrillo shows what might be a TED Talk speaker proclaiming:

 

“Hello, and welcome to my megahit sold-out lecture,

  ‘Everyone Who Disagrees with You Is a Liar or a Fool’.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the December 6, 2023 Pearls Before Swine cartoon by Stephan Pastis has the following four frames:

 

Rat: [Sitting behind the counter with a sign advertising Good Advice for Losers]

Goat: Do you honestly expect to attract customers with a sign like that?

Rat: [rewrites the sign]

Rat: [Sitting behind the counter with a sign now saying Great Advice for Losers]

 

A superlative like great always is better than merely saying good.

 

The cartoon man was modified from this image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Would you buy a dress from a barn or a pita from a pit?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Names for things like brands, and titles for speeches matter. On August 6, 2023 I blogged about Brand names and changes. In that post I discussed a local restaurant which had changed its name from Bad Boy Burger to Cowboy Burger.

 

At the Boise Public Library I found a 2011 book by Christopher Johnson titled MICROSTYLE The Art of Writing Little. Mr. Johnson has a PhD in linguistics and is a verbal branding consultant. On page 99 he discusses the women’s clothing stores known as Dressbarn:

 

“So what’s a bad metaphor? One that either leads to undesirable inferences, or fails to illuminate the target. Undesirable inferences emanate from the retail outlet name The Dress Barn. This name treats a store, metaphorically, as a place that houses animals. Questions immediately arise: Are the animals the dresses or the customers? Certainly no dress shopper wants to be described as a cow, horse, goat, or pig. Nor does one want to be wearing a barn animal, or a dress as big as a barn. Barns are about as far from the urbane world of fashion as a place can get, and they stink. The name The Dress Barn is a metaphorical travesty.”

 

The Wikipedia article about Dressbarn says all 650 of their stores closed on December 26, 2019.

 

At the bottom of page 99 Mr. Johnson discusses how:

 

“Another bad metaphor name is The Pin Cushion, for an acupuncture clinic in Seattle. We stick pins into pincushions carelessly. Pins don’t even have to be very sharp to go into a pincushion. What the names in this case were going for, presumably, was an image of relaxation: the logo shows a human figure lying back on a pillow, Instead they created an image of carelessness.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pita Pit is a franchise sandwich chain that I don’t patronize. As shown above, I would not buy a pita from a pit. A humorous YouTube video clip from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight discussed finding a sandwich in a hole. And last year John did a whole 27-minute show on another sandwich franchise chain named after something underground – Subway.

 

The cartoon of a barn came from Openclipart; the painting of a pit was edited from this altarpiece image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Speeches and slides need headlines - not just titles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The title is an often-neglected part of a speech. It just is a distinguishing name.  Sometimes that does not matter. We don’t get to choose whether or not to listen to a club speech or a contest speech. But where there are competing presentations, like a breakout session at a Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) or a District conference getting chosen becomes important. 

  

Titles That Talk is an article by Lesley Stephenson in the April 2021 issue of Toastmaster magazine. She claims that:

 

“Five words or less is the recommended maximum length for a speech title.”

 

Why ‘or less’? And are five words enough? I don’t think so. She got that five-word limit by looking at a curious sample - titles from Toastmasters World Championship speeches. But they’re inspirational speeches. Informative speeches deserve more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How does a headline differ from a title?

 

A headline is the head for a story or slide giving the essence of what follows – what it is about. (On the internet that’s called clickbait.) Look at a tabloid newspaper on the rack at your local supermarket checkout line. You will see headlines like Dwarf Rapes Nun; Flees in UFO!

 

There is a 2008 book by Dave Paradi titled The Visual Slide Revolution. I blogged about it back on March 30, 2010. In chapter 3, Dave says that once you find the key point of a slide you need to write a headline to describe it. A headline is not the same as a title. A title is a few words that might hint at the topic but doesn’t describe the meaning. A headline is a 6-to-10 word sentence (that will fit on two lines). It clearly states the key point for the audience.

 

 

 

Say something Super

 

The Sears catalog used to have three categories: Good, Better, and Best. At a web site called Best Speech Topics there is a page unfortunately instead called How to Write Good Speech Titles. But animated cereal commercials with Tony the Tiger didn’t say Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes just were good. He said that They’re Great! Try to use superlatives. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slides need headlines too.

 

 When I open PowerPoint, I get template that says:

 

“Click to add title” 

 

So that’s what I’m tempted to do. But Assertion-Evidence slides with a headline and a graphic (as shown above) are more powerful. Michael Alley described how to write them in his 2013 book The Craft of Scientific Presentations. On February 19, 2014 I blogged about them in a detailed post titled Assertion-evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists.

 

When you have finished writing your speech, take another look at the title and see if it could be improved.

 

How many words were in recent speech titles from the top three contestants in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 6, 2021 I blogged about how Your speech needs a great headline – not just a title. That post was a response to an article by Lesley Stephenson titled Titles That Talk which appears on pages 14 and 15 of the April 2021 issue of Toastmaster magazine. She said five words or less is the maximum recommended length for a speech title. Where did that come from? She said:

 

“Back in 2014, the late Rich Haynes, DTM, and I researched speech titles used by competitors in the World Championship of Public Speaking® going back several years. We quickly saw that the vast majority of the finalists’ titles contained just one to five words.”    

 

How many years are in several? And, have things changed in the six years since 2014? I looked at the press releases from Toastmasters for the 39 titles used by the first, second, and third place speeches from 2008 to 2020.

 

Results are shown above in a histogram. 3 speeches had a single title word, 13 had two words, 9 each had three or four words, just 2 had five words, and only one had six words or ten words. Two was the most common number of words – for fully a third of those speeches. I think these very brief titles only will work for inspirational speeches, but will fail miserably for more common informational speeches. Lesley closed by noting that Aaron Beverly’s second place speech for 2016 took a title to the max (with 57 words). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For comparison I also looked at the 60 titles for feature articles in issues of Toastmaster magazine from 2016 through 2020. Results are shown above in another histogram. Here four was the most common number of words.  38 of 60 articles (63%) had one-to-five word titles. The other 22 of 60 articles (37%) had six-to-ten words in their titles.  

 

Your speech needs a great headline - not just a title

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The April 2021 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article on pages 14 and 15 by Lesley Stephenson titled Titles That Talk and subtitled Short, clear, and compelling titles make a strong statement. It is good but not great, and unfortunately has major blind spots.

 

One excellent point she makes is that punctuation (like question marks or exclamation points) may not be understood by the audience when announced by your introducer.

 

But in her fourth paragraph she makes an outrageous claim that five words or less is the recommended maximum length for a speech title. To support that she says that the vast majority of titles used by finalists in their World Championship speeches contained just one to five words. Speeches for that contest are inspirational (an unusual subset), while most other speeches that Toastmasters give will instead will be informational (and often need longer titles). Her five word maximum reminded me of a similar claim Ryan Urie made in an article titled Make Your Slides Sing in the September 2019 issue of Toastmaster. Ryan claimed that a slide ideally should have no more than five or six words. I blogged about that in a post on September 23, 2019 titled How many words should be on a PowerPoint slide: 6, 12,20, 25, 36, or 49? PowerPoint templates instruct us Click to add title, so that’s what most of us do. 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her second paragraph says good titles have the impact of a billboard, and the article even is illustrated by a billboard with the word OUCH! But that is a bad comparison. A title is way more like the headline for a newspaper article (see above for an imaginary supermarket tabloid trifecta cover). She does mention newspaper articles in her fifth paragraph but never headlines. And the link in her second paragraph in red on steering audience focus is to another article by Judith T. Krauthammer in the January 2018 issue of Toastmaster titled Building your audience, one title at a time which mentions neither newspapers nor headlines. On April 25, 2019 I blogged about how Your presentation and slides need powerful headlines, and on June 4, 2018 I blogged about how A presentation slide, presentation, or blog post needs a great headline rather than just a title.

 

We can see current examples of headlines at the AP TOP NEWS web page from the Associated Press. Here are twenty with an average length of 8.6 words:

 

Official: Biden moving vaccine eligibility date to April 19

Police official: Chauvin was trained to defuse situations

Biden boosted by Senate rules as GOP bucks infrastructure

Authorities: Navy medic shoots 2, is shot and killed on base

As states expand vaccines, prisoners still lack access

World powers seek to bring US back into Iran nuclear deal

Israeli president picks Netanyahu to try to form government

EXPLAINER: Why is North Korea skipping the Tokyo Olympics

Capital officer remembered for humor, paying ultimate price

Viral thoughts: Why COVID-19 conspiracy theories persist

COVID-19 vaccine eligibility expands to 16 and over in NY

Musician couple hosts concerts to fundraise for food pantry

IMF upgrades forecast for 2021 global growth to a record 6%

Florida dismisses 2 nd breach risk at phosphate reservoir

Iran prosecutor say 10 indicted for Ukraine plane shootdown

France to open archive for period covering Rwandan genocide

Eating our lunch: Biden points to China in development push

Baylor beatdown: Bears win title, hang 86 – 70 loss on Gonzaga

Myanmar’s online pop-up markets raise funds for protest

The latest: Montana governor tests positive for COVID-19

 

My imaginary tabloid cover combined images of Elvis, JFK, and the Gulf Breeze UFO from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Your presentation and slides need powerful headlines

On April 24, 2019 there was an article by Richard Dean at Enrepreneur titled Own the stage: here’s why your presentation needs a Twitter-friendly headline. It was subtitled by and opened with excellent advice to:

“Boil your presentation down to a single, snappy sentence that would fit into a single tweet.”

One example he gave described how in January 2007 Steve Jobs had introduced the iPhone with just a five-word headline:

“Today Apple reinvents the phone.”

On June 4, 2018 I blogged about how A presentation slide. Presentation, or blog post needs a great headline rather than just a title. The example of an eye-catching tabloid headline I used was a 1985 book title:

“Dwarf rapes nun; flees in UFO.”

The 1955 image of Senator Henry Ashurst buying a newspaper came from the Library of Congress.

A presentation slide, presentation, or blog post needs a great headline rather than just a title

On May 29, 2018 at Synapsis Creative Tom Howell had an excellent blog post about The secret to writing slide headlines. I saw it mentioned by Rosie Hoyland in a very brief article on May 31, 2018 at Presentation Guru titled An effective slide begins with a headline. Newspapers (like the tabloids you find at supermarket checkouts) have mastered the art of creating compelling headlines.   

Tom’s first two points were that:

A] Headlines help you stick with one idea per slide

B] Headlines make the argument your slide supports

Then he gave Four Secrets for Writing Slide Headlines:

1.  Say who, what, when, where, and why

2.  Pretend your headlines are the only part they’ll remember

3.  Use simple, powerful language

4.  Use numbers

But presentations (and blog posts) also need headlines, as I have blogged about repeatedly under the label of speech titles.

At the beginning of his post Tom linked to a May 2006 article by Michael Alley et al. in Technical Communication titled How the design of headlines in presentation slides affects audience retention. Unfortunately he didn’t dig deeper and discuss designing assertion-evidence slides. On February 19, 2014 I had blogged about how Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists.

The tabloid headline Dwarf rapes nun; flees in UFO was the title from a 1985 novel by Arnold Sawislak, which was reviewed in an article at the New York Times titled The unholy grail of Granville Swift.  

Do you really need to crush your presentation?

I have seen articles or blog posts with titles like 4 steps to crush any presentation, 6 things successful TEDx speakers do to crush any speaking gig, and Crush every presentation with the Logitech Spotlight presentation remote.

Their authors apparently think I would use their meaning for the word crush – to subdue completely. But the mental image I get is of the mortar and pestle shown above – since I instead first think of crush as to reduce to particles by pounding or grinding. Logitech probably didn’t imagine their remote being used as a pestle, but I did.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary web page for the transitive verb crush lists the following five meanings:

1] a) to squeeze by force or pressure so as to alter or destroy structure.  

1] b) to squeeze together into a mass.

2] to hug or embrace.

3] to reduce to particles by pounding or grinding.

4] a) to suppress or overwhelm as if by pressure or weight.

4] b) to oppress or burden grievously.

4] c) to sudue completely.

5] to crowd or push.

Watch what words you put in the title of your speech, article or blog post.

How to confuse your speech audience with a misleading title

On Sunday, August 16th, Brian Tracy posted an excellent four-minute YouTube video of a speech. It is about the seven most effective ways to open a talk (and make a powerful presentation) which are:

1] Present a problem that needs a solution.
2] Present a common goal.
3] Ask a rhetorical question to grab attention.
4] Make a startling statement.
5] Tell your own story of why you’re here.
6] Compare or contrast two things or conditions.
7] Promise them advantages and benefits from listening.

But, the misleading title just is Brian Tracy, How to Talk and Prepare a Powerful Presentation. Also, back on December 12, 2012 he posted the same video with the shorter title How to Talk and Prepare a Powerful Presentation. He didn’t take his own advice, since on page 26 of his Speak to Win book he says:

“There is a powerful method of preparation that I have used over the years. I start with a clean sheet of paper. I write the title of my talk at the top. I then write a one-sentence description of the purpose or objective of the talk. What is the ‘’job’ it has to do?”

There’s also an amusingly backward hand gesture near the beginning. Watch Brian’s hand move counterclockwise when he says:

“We imagine that a talk is like a circle, and it starts at the top like a clock and it goes tick, tick, tick, and it comes around back to where it started.”
 
The audience image came from Wikimedia Commons.

Why I’m Better Than You is a very bad title for a speech

Today’s Pearls Before Swine comic featured a Conference of the Self-Righteous where four speakers began arguing because they all had used that same very bad title which just insults the audience. They instead should have used some variation on How You Can Be Better.

71% of business managers have either been sleepy or fallen asleep during presentations

Back on October 31, 2005 Infommersion, Inc. put a press release on Business Wire  about an online survey titled Business Executives Admit to Dozing Through Boring Presentations. (They also said that 43% of them had caught other people dozing).

On November 23, 2013 Patti Wood posted on her Body Language Expert Blog about that survey with the misleading headline Research shows that 71% of executives admit falling asleep during a presentation. Her first bullet point in that post says instead that:

“Results released this week from an online poll by a data visualization software company reveals that 71 percent of business executives surveyed have fallen asleep or felt sleepy during dull presentations.”

There is a big difference between just feeling sleepy and actually falling asleep. Her headline lost me as a possible fan. Also October 2005 sure is a long way from being last week.

When I clicked Patti’s link to Infommersion nothing happened. So, I did a Google search and found out why. On November 1, 2005 there was a press release on Business Wire about how another firm called Business Objects had acquired Infommersion .

Other interesting results in that Infommersion press release about their survey were that:

“The most difficult types of presentation to remain fully awake through were individual speeches (35%) followed by training sessions (23%) and then general meetings (16%). Webcasts revealed themselves as the easiest type of conference to stay alert throughout, with only 11% of respondents saying they found this difficult to sit through.

Survey participants agreed that the most important ingredient for success was an 'animated and enthusiastic' speaker (51%), with an 'interesting and interactive' presentation gaining 36% of the votes. Finally, 3% of those polled said it helped if the presenter was 'good looking'.”

The yawning man came from a painting by Mihály Zichy.

A blog or web page needs a great title!

My last post led to some comments from Audrey Selig. I had pointed to her hub page (or blog) which is titled How to Become a Good Public Speaker. In her comment she said she checked it out and good speaker was a good tag. Well, maybe what she really needs instead is a great title. Hint – Tom Antion calls his blog Great Public Speaking.

Audrey already wrote an eHow article titled How to Present a Captivating Speech, so perhaps her page title should contain a word like captivating, compelling, or superlative instead of just plain good.

When I glanced at her page title, I thought that just was the title of the current article, which actually is Plan by Mapping Your Speech. She tries to explain a mind map using words alone. I think that topic instead cries out for an image showing an example. When I discussed Mind Mapping and Idea Mapping for Planning Speeches I linked to three examples of what maps look like (and two videos).

Audrey also asked if I could link to her site. I only link to a handful of blogs that I read regularly.

Create magnetic titles or headlines: use great, not just good

Recently I found two articles titled How to Become a Good Public Speaker, and How to Be a Good Public Speaker. Those are not magnetic headlines that would draw in a reader, or titles that would entice someone to attend a presentation. Instead, please consider using either:

How to Be a Great Public Speaker, or

How to Be the Best Public Speaker That You Can Be

A superlative like great is powerful; a low-level comparative like good is not.

Kellogg’s has sold mass quantities of (Sugar) Frosted Flakes breakfast cereal to both adults and kids. Their cartoon mascot Tony the Tiger always proclaims that THEY’RE GREAT.

Back when I was a child the Sears Roebuck catalog commonly listed three categories for each type of product: good, better, and best. Good was not very good. Better grade shirts were so well made that I got them after my older brother outgrew them, and then my younger brother finally wore them out.

Public speaking without vomiting

On November 10th the Detroit Free Press published an article titled Public speaking needn’t make you nauseous. One of their staff writers had attended a seminar by Donna Marie, a speaking consultant and life coach, which had the same title as this post. It certainly is a memorable title, but not in a positive way. For me nausea and vomiting will always be associated with very unpleasant experiences involving motion sickness. How about you?

Ms. Marie’s web page also describes her program as Public Speaking Without Vomiting, the SPEAK E-Z in Front of Groups workshop. In a previous post I asked Will your title draw people in or turn them away. Would you be much more likely to spend $159 for a workshop titled:

A) Speak E-Z in front of Groups

B) Public Speaking Without Vomiting.

My vote is for A), since vomiting disgusts me. How about you?

A title can trigger the creative process, or just confuse the audience

A blog post on Effective Speech Titles & Why They Matter points out that the choice of a title can trigger, focus, or organize the creative process.

In his book Chuck Amuck Chuck Jones tells how he once directed an entire Looney Tunes cartoon by stumbling on the mountaineering phrase “Ascent of the Matterhorn.” He realized that if “Ascent” became “a scent” then the new title would be a perfectly natural vehicle for one of their stock characters - Pepé Le Pew (that amorous little French skunk). It was their15^th story with that character and it fell together with amazing ease, as if the storyboard wrote itself. You can watch the video for A Scent of the Matterhorn either here or here.

Plays and movies sometimes wind up with amazing titles. Peter Weiss wrote a famous play that later became a movie and usually is advertised just as Marat/Sade. That is because the actual very pretentious title was: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

Five of the worst movie titles are:

1. Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever

2. Freddy Got Fingered

3. Vanilla Sky

4. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

5. Gigli

Gigli also is considered one of the worst movies ever made. It did amazingly poorly at the box office considering that it starred Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (along with Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Lainie Kazan). Gigli is the last name of Affleck’s character.

A Gigli saw is a flexible wire saw used by surgeons for cutting bones. During World War II Gigli saws wre hidden in the boot laces of pilots (and used to cut prison bars if they were shot down and captured).

Will your title draw people in, or turn them away?

Your speech title on a written program is the first impression that people have of you. Based on it they will either decide they must hear you, or perhaps attend another session.

The following articles discuss creating speech titles. Which will you read first (or choose to ignore)?

How to Create Book and Speech Titles that Sizzle and Sell, by Joe Sabah

How to Create Sizzling Speech and Book Titles, by Sandra Schrift

The Power of a Great Title, by Dave Curley

Effective Speech Titles & Why They Matter

Write Good Speech Titles

How to Make Your Speech Titles Talk

How to Title a Public Speech, by Jennifer Eblin