Technical reports should have strong, specific, and informative titles that tell the reader exactly what to expect. At the same time, titles should include clear and direct language without wordiness or redundancy.

The worst titles tell the reader nothing about the document. Here are some examples of poorly chosen titles:

• Paper #3
• Recommendation
• My Report
• Rough Draft

Those titles tell you nothing about the related document. As an analogy, would you ever go see Movie #2 or RomCom? Probably not. You expect a movie title to tell you something about what you are going to see. The same concept applies to technical writing.

Find the Right Words for Your Title

1. Begin with the keywords you used in your research.
   Think about the words that say exactly what your report is about, and jot those words down. Your keywords should describe the subject area. For your report, your keywords should include the kind of writing that you are studying.
2. Next, add any words to your list that describe the kind of writing you are doing.
   In our case, you are writing a recommendation report, so add those words if they are not already on your list.
3. Consider the specific situation for your report.
   Write down any specific place, person, concept, object, or other entity that is involved in your topic. Review the words and phrases you already have written down and make them specific to your research. For example, let’s say you wrote down the word military. Make that more specific. Which branch of the military? What specific part of that branch? What particular kind of people? With a little work, you can go from the general military to the very specific special agents in naval crime investigation or the mountain phase of Army Ranger School.
4. Once you have your list of words, choose the most significant ones and use them to create your title.
   Remember that you can change the word form as necessary to fit your title. For a recommendation report, for instance, you could consider different forms of the word recommend, such as recommendation, recommending, recommended, and to recommend.
5. Finally cut out any unnecessary words to make your title clear and direct.
   Make sure you remove any redundancy. Watch for a pile-up of prepositional phrases. Try reading the title out loud. If you stumble on the words or run out of breath, you probably need to revise.

Bad Titles and How to Fix Them

For the purpose of these examples, the student is in VetMed and examining a care guide as a kind of writing in the field.

Bad Title: How to Properly Write a Kitten Care Guide User Manual

Improved Title: Writing a Kitten Care Guide

Reason for Changes:

• “How to Properly Write” can be condensed to one word: “Writing.” The word proper isn’t needed at all. Who is going to write about how to write an improper guide?
• “Kitten Care Guide” and “User Manual” are repetitive. The phrase “User Manual” doesn’t add any new information, so you can cut it.

Bad Title: Recommendations and Findings for Creating a Kitten Care Guide Document

Improved Title: Creating a Kitten Care Guide: A Recommended Process

Reason for Changes:

• “Recommendations and Findings” is redundant. Just use a form of the word recommendation.
• “Kitten Care Guide” and “Document” are repetitive. Drop the word document.
• Use a colon to break your title into two parts. It gives the reader all the meaning without piling up extra words.

 

 

Photo credit: Report title page from the General Accounting Office of the United States, used under public domain.