I was surprised at the size of the font in the New York Times for the day of the attack. Would have thought it would have been at least another %50 larger if not more. Hope this doesn’t seem like im making light of the situation. Anyway, anyone know if the New York Times or other large newspapers have a set of general guidelines for the size of the headline i.e. something for an official declaration of war, presidential assassination etc.?
I’m sure the NYT has a set standard in their stylebook. They (and especially the Wall Street Journal) don’t want to get their styles confused with “newspapers” like the New York Post that frequently use 50-million point size headlines.
I suspect that an editor keeps a record of headline sizes used in the past, for particular events; and then weighs each new event against the past events, gauging their relative importance. I don’t think they say “this size for assassinations” and “that size for shipwrecks.”
Perhaps there’s an editor out there who can relate his personal experience.
I have a copy of the Wednesday Times right here. The headline “U.S. ATTACKED” is 66-point type, which is a good 10 points (there are 72 points in an inch) larger than the actual Times masthead.
There’s no requirement that a headline by X size. However, when laying out the page you have to take several elements into considertion.
First, you don’t want to split a word at the end of a headline. By that measure, the headline could have been bigger.
Second, if you have a dramatic photo, you want to get it as high on the page as possible. That’s a hell of a photo, and you don’t want to fight with it for the reader’s attention.
I was more struck by the headline in the Wall Street Journal, which, for the first time I can ever remember, stretched across more than two columns.
Me too. For the record, the type the WSJ used appears to be about 32-point, and the two-line headline read
Reminds me of the Onion headline for Dec. 8, 1941:
WA- (headline continued on page 2)