David Emery OnlineNon-Titular
30 December 2010
Titles appear to have quietly died again.
They used to be alive: In email subject and body form, in newspaper articles, books and academic papers. The first popular forms of independent, online writing imitated these, basing themselves on the opinion columns of print.
[...] Perhaps it’s just a trait of apps simplifying and requiring less of users to create content, especially desirable on portable devices where if not restricted by cramped input, people are restricted by time. Alternatively, it’s a necessary pattern for streaming content, since the frequency of regular updates need to be skimmed and a formal title interrupts that flow. Either way, I don’t think mandatory titles will come back this time.
Generally speaking I disagree; I don’t see titles disappearing on the most part as for long form content (i.e. longer then a tweet) they’re very useful in determining whether to read the article or not. I’d also argue that on something like Instagram the description is a title, and that on a more general level titles = short descriptions.
Just because Twitter doesn’t have them doesn’t mean everything else shouldn’t.
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