Various arbitrary rules affecting the mechanics of the head are observed by different newspapers, and the copy reader going from one paper to another is likely to find a brand new set of patterns to work by. These mechanical details, however, are easily mastered after one has acquired the knack of putting the story into terse, meaty sentences. The only way to learn how to write heads, after one knows the general principles, is to write them.
=Overline.=--Head over a cut. When the name appears under a cut (this being an _underline_), it is not repeated in the overline, which must be an identifying sentence. “Banker Who Is Running for Congress” and “Woman Who Shot at Burglar in Her Home” are typical overlines.
=Box Head.=--Head enclosed in a border. Many overlines are set in this way.
=Banner.=--A headline extending across the top of a page.
=Jump or Run-Over Head.=--Head used over the continuation of a story that runs over (jumps) from one page to another. Some newspapers require a new head for the jump; others use the top deck of the original head set in smaller type.
=Freak Head.=--Special type of head used over freakish news stories. (See Figure 7.)
_Woman’s Shoulder Injured on Street Car and She Asks Damages of Company._
Figure 7.--Freak head from the New York _World_, set in italics to distinguish it from other news heads.]
=Sub-head.=--A head, usually one line, placed within the text of the story to avoid the monotony of an unbroken front of type. Most newspapers use sub-heads in stories running half a column or more. “Two sub-heads or none” is the rule in some offices. A sub-head is based on the paragraph immediately following.
Type, in the printer’s vernacular, is _upper case_ (capital letters) and _lower case_ (small letters). A word that is capitalized is said to go _up_. A word not capitalized is put _down_. When both capitals and small letters are used in a line, it is said to be in _caps and lower case_ (abbreviated l. c.). A line set in capitals is _all caps_.
The general practice is to capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and interjections in the head, as in the title of a book or play. This is a detail left to the compositor, who is guided by the newspaper’s typographical style.