To Attract or to Inform: What Are Titles For?
http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=NV6EFN3N7NGNTWQT
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  peer-reviewed

Hartley, James
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
2005

Abstract:

This article critiques some titles in journal articles for being misleading and it argues that titles need to be informative. Examples are given of work on measuring the effectiveness of titles in two areas--sentence structure and reader comprehension--and the article concludes with brief comments on the effectiveness of book titles.