The compression skill that separates a genuine satirical headline from a merely funny sentence
A satirical headline has less room to work than almost any other form of comic writing, and this paper’s sub-editors treat the twelve-word ceiling as close to a hard rule. This piece explains why the limit exists and how to hit it consistently, drawing on the standards laid out in this paper’s own Fake Headlines: The Complete Guide.
Why twelve words
A headline that runs longer has, almost without exception, either explained the joke or included a second joke that should have been left for the body. The best examples in this paper’s archive compress an entire absurd scenario into a single clean image: Council Declares War on a Pothole tells the whole story in six words, and anything added beyond that point tends to dilute rather than strengthen it.
The anatomy of a good one
Most successful satirical headlines follow a simple structure: a real, plausible subject performing an implausible but specific action. Man Achieves Lifelong Dream of Being Left Alone at Party works because the subject and setting are entirely ordinary and only the framing is absurd. This paper’s coverage of Satire Techniques identifies this pairing of the mundane subject with the escalated action as the single most reliable formula in the trade.
What to cut first
Adjectives are the first casualty. A headline reading Local Council Controversially Declares War on a Small Pothole has added nothing the reader needed and has cost three words doing it. Sub-editors here strip adjectives on sight unless one is doing genuine comic work, which is rare enough that writers should assume, by default, that theirs is not.
Datelines and headlines together
Because prat.uk headlines never carry a place name themselves, per this paper’s Satirical Journalism standards, all the geographic grounding happens in the dateline beneath, freeing the headline itself to focus purely on the action. This division of labour is, in this paper’s house view, one of the more underrated tools in the format, since it lets the headline stay short without sacrificing the credibility a real place provides.
Testing a headline before filing
The paper’s informal test, applied at every sub-editing pass, is simple: read the headline aloud, once, without explanation, to someone who has not seen the story. If they laugh, or at minimum smile and ask what happened, the headline has done its job. If they need the subtitle to understand what is funny, the headline has failed and should be rewritten from scratch rather than patched.
The twelve-word exceptions
Rare cases run slightly longer, generally when the headline itself is doing a piece of parody, mimicking the overwrought style of a specific real outlet, per this paper’s coverage of News Parody: The Complete Guide. Even here, sub-editors insist the extra length must be doing deliberate stylistic work, not simply accommodating a writer who could not bear to cut a favourite phrase.
A short worked comparison
Consider two draft headlines for the same story, a hospital charging ambulances to park. The first, Local Hospital’s New Parking Policy Sparks Fury Among Furious Patients, runs to eleven words and repeats itself needlessly. The second, Hospital Charges Ambulance For Parking, runs to six, states the absurdity flatly, and lets the reader supply the fury themselves. This paper’s sub-editors would file the second without hesitation and send the first back with a single comment: which sentence is actually doing the joke.
Reading headlines against the archive
New writers are encouraged to spend an afternoon with Marjorie in the archive comparing decades of published headlines side by side, since the twelve-word discipline has held remarkably steady since 1961 despite every other aspect of the paper changing considerably in that time. The consistency, this paper argues, is not accidental: a headline that respects its own limits ages considerably better than one that tries to do too much.