We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
294 Building Theatre Patronage
line is not only to win attention — and, incidentally, research shows that headlines win attention in a ratio of 40 to 60 compared with illustrations — but to make the interest of attention so intense, that the reader is naturally brought on to the copy. It is a springboard which sends the reader right into the copy before he can stop moving.
The headline is limited to about five words. It may be in the form of a question. It may be a command. It may be an exclamation. It may be a simple statement of an interesting fact. It may even be the introduction to a testimonial such as "At last the critics agree . . ."or "Five women of Blanktown say . . .*" The press sheet often carries most effective headlines. If not, compose your own.
Your Readers.
When you use words to express thoughts you are playing on the minds of your readers in the sense that if any word used is unfamiliar to the reader, you strike only a dead key. The average reader has a limited vocabulary. When you use words that the reader does not understand you are wasting space. It is not a question of whether you understand the copy. Your purpose is to have someone else understand it. You may feel very proud of a sparkle like "the sophisticated cosmopolite" or "the ecstatic rhapsodies of a frenzied artiste in . . ."or "the intriguing machinations of a continental paramour," etc. If your readers do not understand, you have paid for space to exploit your own knowledge. Your pride costs just so much per linei or per inch in newspaper rates. You can talk the language of your readers only when you feel that you are one of them. To be one of them you must know their thoughts and live their lives and be as close to them as you possibly can. You might have taken the phrase "sophisticated cosmopolite" from a press sheet. Its use there should not justify your use of it. For a Park Avenue theatre this wording might have been effective — that is, if every prospect of that theatre understood. It may be effective elsewhere. But is it effective for you? You cannot be too simple. Do not embroider fancy adjectives and hang high-sounding words on your copy or smear it over with six-syllable "bunk." It is harder to write simple copy and