"Triangle gets bad news on rail" (Thursday, page 1A). Reader David Forvendel says the headline amounted to editorializing: "For a great many Triangle residents, this is not bad news. This is GREAT news and shows an instance where the federal government did the right thing."

"Bush: Vote won't end violence" (Tuesday, page 1A). Reader Scott Pierce sees bias: "If you asked the Democratic National Committee for a suggestion for a headline that had next to nothing to do with the event you were supposedly reporting on, but that could do the maximum damage to the president and our efforts in Iraq, I don't think they could come up with a better header."

"Raleigh firm with TTA link under investigation," (Dec. 10, page 1B). Triangle Transit Authority chair Carter Worthy objects: "To put us in the headline and not even put the company that's affected in the headline, it's just ridiculous and it's very unfair...The headline writers have no accountability to the truth, and that is counter to everything your paper is supposed to be about."

Good headlines or bad? Let's discuss the art and science of headline-writing, then get back to those examples.

One basic bit of information you may not know is that headlines are not written by the reporter who wrote the story. Instead, the head is written after the story is finished by a copy editor, who also edits the story for accuracy, clarity and fairness.

Why that separation of responsibilities? One reason is purely logistical. The reporter doesn't know where the story will run in the paper and how much headline space it will have. Another reason is that the copy editor is a fresh pair of eyes -- the reader's eyes, ideally -- who brings outside perspective to the story. Editors by training are more skilled than reporters in capturing the essence of a story in a minimum of words.

Copy editors are trying to do two things in writing a headline. The most important is to tell you what the story is about. The second is to entice you to read it. Those can be conflicting goals, because the first is descriptive and the second is, let's be crude, sales. The challenge is not to oversell a story or falsely advertise it.

And yes, there is an art to the enterprise. Listen to Millicent Fauntleroy, who as copy desk "slot" oversees much of the headline-writing: "Sometimes, we deliberately and pointedly take what we call the 'bikini' approach. We look for the one most important aspect of the story... and highlight that."

The bikini headline, in other words, doesn't try to cover it all. That's as contrasted to the "umbrella" approach, says Fauntleroy, where the story is fully described between the main headline and the summary "drophead" below it.

There are differences on what makes a good headline. One of our most famous -- or infamous -- recently was this title for a story about out-of-state waste companies opening landfills in North Carolina: "N.C. set to become Yankee dump." An editor stoutly defended that head as being accurate and bold; I thought it unnecessarily thumbed our nose at non-indigenous readers. And so did many of them, judging from e-mails and letters.

But the copy editors on a day-to-day basis produce a steady flow of headlines that are informative, accurate and sometimes as pleasantly surprising as a gift under a tree. Some good recent examples: "Cold snap bites at the homeless," "Jets, birds share air" and "Winter mess slides to the west."

Copy editors perform their labors in a pressure-cooker environment between 5 p.m. and midnight, cranking out anywhere from five to 25 headlines, along with their story-editing and other duties. It's not an easy job.

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