The inverted pyramid and headlines

The inverted pyramid is a text shape with the main point in the first paragraph and details in order of importance. A headline says honestly what’s inside.

News you can cut

Newspaper editors have long known that a reader can leave at any paragraph. So a news story is written with the first paragraph answering “who, what, when, where”, and the following ones adding details in order of falling importance. An editor who runs out of room cuts off the tail, and the story is still clear. This shape is called the inverted pyramid: the wide part, the most important, is at the top, and the point, the minor details and the backstory, is at the bottom.

Where the form came from is disputed. It is usually tied to the telegraph and the newspapers of the second half of the nineteenth century, and often to the Associated Press, but historians aren’t sure how it really went; the Wikipedia article in the sources discusses the versions. What matters to us is something else: on the web the form turned out useful again, for the same reasons. A reader can be lost at any point, and a page is shown in pieces: in search, in a social card, in an email.

What the pyramid looks like on a page:

1. The conclusion. What this is, who it’s for and what to do. All in a sentence or two.
2. Key details. Prices, deadlines, the order of work: whatever the decision can’t be made without.
3. Conditions and limits. What’s included and what isn’t, what the deadline depends on.
4. Backstory and reference. History, particulars, everything not everybody needs.

The law is the same as in the last lesson: details aren’t thrown out, they’re put lower. The pyramid is applied twice: to the page as a whole and to each of its sections. In a section too, the first sentence carries the main point and the rest gives the reasons.

You can check whether the pyramid worked with the cut test: cover the bottom half of the page with your hand. If the reader still understands what to do, there is a pyramid. If they’d understand the history of the workshop but never learn the prices, there isn’t.

Check yourself: what is the “cut test”?

Cover the bottom part of a text and check whether the main point is still clear. If it is, the most important thing is at the start.

Where the pyramid lets you down

Every form has limits. The pyramid is good where a reader is looking for an answer. But it doesn’t suit a text whose point is the journey itself.

• Stories. If you put the conclusion at the start, the suspense the story rests on disappears. You don’t begin a joke with the punchline. A separate part of the course is about stories.
• Hard news and delicate subjects. When the reader must first be led to the point, or the conclusion will frighten them or be misunderstood. The preparation here is short, but it is there.
• Reasoning where the conclusion can’t be understood without the premises. The answer “yes, you can” with no conditions is dangerous: for a lawyer or an expert almost any answer comes with a caveat. So the conclusion at the start of an expert text honestly names its own limits: “as a rule yes, if…”.

An example with the default persona. The visitor’s question: “Can a boundary be settled without going to court?” A bad first paragraph: “Boundary disputes are among the hardest areas of property law, and every case is different.” A good one: “Often yes: if the neighbors agree, a boundary plan filed with the county recorder settles it without court. If they don’t agree, a court decides.” (An example of the shape, not legal advice.) The good paragraph has an answer, a caveat and a next step.

Check yourself: in which of two cases does the pyramid fit worse, a page of prices or the story of how the workshop began?

The story fits worse. In it the conclusion comes at the end and holds the interest. Prices are needed at once, so the pyramid suits them.

A headline stands alone

A headline is read far more often than the text under it. The advertising classic David Ogilvy put the ratio at five to one in his book Confessions of an Advertising Man; the figure depends on the publications and nobody has measured it for the web, but the order of magnitude is clear: almost everybody reads the headline, and many don’t read the rest.

The web has one more peculiarity: a headline is seen away from the page. Nielsen Norman Group calls such texts “microcontent”: the headline and description in search results, an email subject line, the caption of a link on social media, the name of a tab. The reader judges by them before opening the page, and there is no neighboring picture or paragraph to explain what it’s about. So a headline has to make sense on its own.

Three rules follow:

1. Name the subject. “Boundary survey consultation” is clearer than “We solve any problem”.
2. Say the benefit or the result, if you can do it honestly: “Prices and timelines”, “What to bring to your first meeting”.
3. Don’t promise what isn’t there. A bait headline (“You won’t believe…”, “Doctors hate him”) wins a click and loses trust: the person came for a surprise and didn’t find one. For a service with money and documents behind it, losing trust costs more than a click is worth. And if a headline makes a false claim about a product or service, it becomes a matter of advertising law: in the US the FTC treats a deceptive claim as deceptive wherever it appears, in a headline included.

Check yourself: why must a headline make sense without the page?

Because it is seen on its own: in search results, on social media, in an email, in a tab. There is no page beside it to explain what it’s about.

One meaning in four places

For one page there are really several headlines. They can be close, but they mustn’t contradict one another:

• title, the tag at the start of the file (in the head). It’s seen in the browser tab and as the page’s headline in search results. A length to aim for: up to 60 characters.
• h1, the main headline on the page itself. It can be a little longer and softer than the title. A page has one h1.
• og:title and og:description (“og” is for Open Graph): the tags from which a social network or messenger builds the card when you paste a link. The protocol was created at Facebook in 2010, it is described at ogp.me, and nearly the whole web uses it, including Slack, LinkedIn, iMessage and Telegram.
• description, a meta tag with a description. A search engine may show it under the headline. A length to aim for: 120 to 160 characters.

These are guidelines, not laws. Search engines cut text by width in pixels, not by the number of characters, and decide for themselves what to show: Google says that it may choose a different title and a different description if yours don’t fit the query. But to get a general idea, play with the “Headline” tab in the diagram.

Pyramid Headline

Put the paragraphs in order from the most important to the least, then move the slider: the reader leaves where the text breaks off.

1. ↑ ↓
   The workshop began when the last bicycle shop in town closed and there was nowhere left to get a wheel fixed.
2. ↑ ↓
   The workshop has been open since 2019, and its mechanics trained with a maker of brake systems.
3. ↑ ↓
   We don’t take cracked carbon frames or e-bikes: they need different tools.
4. ↑ ↓
   Book by phone or online. Without a booking you can bring a bike in on weekdays from 9 to 6.
5. ↑ ↓
   Inner tube replaced: $12, 20 minutes. Brakes and gears: $25. Full service: $90.
6. ↑ ↓
   We replace tubes, adjust brakes and gears and give a full service in one day, if you bring the bike in before noon.

Paragraphs the reader finished: 6

A reader who stopped here knows the main things: what is done, what it costs and how to book.

Now, how to write. Three versions of a headline aren’t there for beauty, but so that you choose, instead of taking the first that comes. And the versions must differ in approach, not in a word. Here are five approaches worth having in reserve:

• Direct: names the subject and who it’s for. “Boundary surveys in Riverbend”.
• Benefit: names the result. “A boundary line the county will accept” (if you can promise that).
• A visitor’s question: repeats what they’re thinking. “My neighbor moved the fence: what now?”
• A number or a fact: “Three documents to bring to your first meeting”.
• Curiosity: “The one mistake in a boundary survey that costs years in court”. It works well in a magazine, but it almost never suits a service that carries responsibility: curiosity promises more than the page delivers.

For an expert page it’s better to begin with the direct and the benefit, and leave the question for articles. In the lesson on copywriting formulas you’ll learn to score headlines on four criteria; for now it’s enough to ask yourself: is it clear what the page is about, if nothing else can be seen?

Check yourself: how are “three different headlines” different from “one headline rewritten three times”?

In approach: direct, benefit, question, fact. If one word differs, it is one headline.

Practice

Build your project’s home page as a pyramid and label it for search and social media.

1. In the head put a title (up to 60 characters), a description (50 to 160 characters), og:title and og:description. These are the four lines of your business card in search results and on social media.
2. In the article write an h1, then three paragraphs in pyramid order. The first paragraph, with the class lead, has the answer and the main action from the brief in the same words. The detail paragraph holds the details, and background the backstory.
3. In the note “Three headlines” write one headline in each of three approaches, mark the approach in approach, choose the number of the best and explain your choice: does it honestly name the page?

In the preview you won’t see search results or a social card, because those are pages on other people’s sites. Check the result with the diagram above: paste in your own title and description and see how they look cut off. To judge the headlines more strictly, in the part on copywriting you’ll come back to them with the “4 U’s” formula.