An Open Letter to My Students: Why Do You Hate Titles?

Okay, so here's the deal: A title is an important part of any writing project.  It helps to orient your reader.  It provides a key insight into your main point.  It is an invaluable expression of your writer's voice.  In an ironic twist, I have now graded about 10 papers about writer's voice as an "important issue," but these papers all had titles like "Important Issues Paper: Final Draft."  Oooh!  Riveting!  I can't wait to read another boring paper with the same boring title about the importance of writing with creativity and originality.  Do you see?  The irony?

So what's up with this?  I have decided that you must have learned somewhere along the line in your education to hate titles.  Maybe you were penalized unfairly for a snarky (if clever) title on a high school essay.  Maybe you are intimidated by the long, onerous, colon-happy titles common in academic prose ("Oh the humanity: Long and Onerous Titles as a Commonplace in Academic Research Writing").  Maybe you have another professor for another class who thinks titles are stupid. I get it; sometimes our subconscious fears and anxieties about writing surface in strange ways.

But now that it's out in the open, let's all stop.  Stop it.  Now.  Let's put all of this aside for the good of your writer's voice, and for the collective good of all humankind.  No one wants to read 30 student essays in a few days, not even the kindest, most compassionate writing teacher.  But clever, interesting titles make the process enjoyable, because they help me (the grader) focus on what's unique and interesting about your work rather than what's the same and frustrating about student writing in general.  As future writing teachers, you will all be in my position soon, so have a heart!

The trick is to write a title that reveals something (but not everything) about what YOU have to add to this ongoing conversation about literacy and composition pedagogy.  Make it clever, make it snarky, or make it polished, professional, and smart, but for the love of Pete, make it your own.  Show me what makes your writing unique and creative.  Make me want to keep reading.  I am a writing teacher, and this is my job, but I'm also a person, darn it.  And I have unreasonably high expectations for all of you.

That's all.  Mairin, out.