Title This Article!

By: Ryan McGreal
Published: 2006/05/30 (Category: Humour)

(This post isn't about revitalization, but what's the point of a blog if you can't riff occasionally on quirks that don't fit anywhere else? I promise it won't become a habit.)

I was recently reading an article in Slate on falling birthrates. When it mentioned Philip Longman's new book Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It, I had an epiphany of sorts concerning the book's title, which followed what I suddenly realized is a painfully predictable non-fiction template.

The pattern is simple but almost infinitely variable. Start with a memetic catch-phrase that identifies a problem, and follow it up with a colon. Then finish it off with a phrase promising to explain how the problem happened and "what to do about it."

A quick search on Amazon turned up the following punctilious titles:

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, by Marcia Angell
Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It, by Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner, who must be thankful that our patent system doesn't extend to algorithms for titling books
Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It, by Jane M. Healy
"Could Do Better": Why Children Underachieve and What to Do About It, by Harvey P. Mandel and Sander I. Marcus
Sugars and Flours: How They Make Us Crazy, Sick, and Fat and What to Do About It, by Joan Ifland
A Job To Die For: Why So Many Americans are Killed, Injured or Made Ill at Work and What to Do About It, by Lisa Cullen
Flawless: Your Top 10 Character Defects and What to Do About Them, by Louis A. Tartaglia
Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It, by Allan and Barbara Pease
PMS: Solving the Puzzle - Sixteen Causes of Premenstrual Syndrome and What to Do About It, by Linaya Hahn
Mom, I Hate You! Children's Provocative Communication: What It Means and What to Do About It, by Don Fleming and Mark Ritts
Negative Criticism: Its Swath of Destruction and What to Do About It, by Sidney B. Simon

I also found the following books, which deviate slightly from the mold while still hewing it its principles:

The Classified Man: Twenty-Two Types of Men (And What to Do About Them), by Susannah M. Hoffman, who sought originality through the clever introduction of parentheses
Derailed: What Went Wrong and What to Do About America's Passenger Trains, by Joseph Vranich, who mixed up the "how" and "what" portions of his title
Why Customers Don't Do What You Want Them to Do and What to Do About It, by Ferdinand F. Fournies, who dispensed with the memetic catch-phrase
Still Single: Are You Making Yourself Unavailable When You Don't Want to Be? What to Do About It!, by Casey Maxwell Clair and Jeffrey W. Whiting, who introduced punctuation and broke the "what" phrase into a new sentence
Why Men Cheat and What to Do About It: A Practical Handbook, by Paul Blanchard, who cheated a little with his title format

So as a corrective measure, I'm going to write a book to help prevent more of the same. I'll call it Stupid Book Titles: How The Publishing Industry Lost Its Imagination and What To Do About It.

Ryan McGreal, the editor of Raise the Hammer, lives in Hamilton with his family and works as a process and service analyst, web application developer, writer, and journal editor. Ryan volunteers with Hamilton Light Rail, a citizens group dedicated to bringing light rail transt to Hamilton. He is also is the city editor for H Magazine. Several of his essays have been published in the Hamilton Spectator.

Discuss This Article

Read Comments

By adrian | http://socialtech.ca/ade/
Posted 5/31/2006 9:05:10 PM

Nice catch there Ryan. Got a good chuckle out of this one.

(Permalink)

Log into RTH Account
Username
Password

Post Anonymously
Screen Name
What do you get if you divide 12 by 3?
Leave this field blank

Comments

SP@M TEST (Please Leave Blank)

Word on the Street

Aerotropolis: Will It Fly? - Wednesday, December 3, 2008, at Mount Hope Community Hall, 3027 Homestead Dr., Mount Hope.

More WOTS Events

Hammerblog

City Backs Down on Airport Development Size (Dec. 1, 2008) - Citizens at City Hall (CATCH) reports that the city has backed down on at least one aspect of its dispute with the province on the size of the Airport Economic Growth District (AEGD), a planned in

Same Old 'Traffic Trumps Everything' Thinking (Dec. 1, 2008) - Apparently, the City Traffic department still doesn't get it.

After turning James and John into two-way streets that slowed traffic down, the city is now looking for ways to speed thing

Toronto Council to Vote on Corporate, Union Donations (Dec. 1, 2008) - Toronto City Council has another opportunity today to decide whether to allow corporate and union donations to be proffered during municipal campaigns.

City Council has voted against such don

Poor and Dirty (Dec. 1, 2008) - Your humble editor presents a modest tribute to the Hamilton Spectator report, "Poor and dirty", published November 27, 2008.

Poor and Dirty They see us rollin' On the highway The

Double Downtown Density? We Should be Aiming to Quadruple It (Nov. 28, 2008) - Today's Spectator carries a head-scratching article on a proposal by Councillor Brian McHattie to double the downtown's urban density of 200 people and jobs per hectare to 400 people and j

Councillors Propose Salary Freeze (Nov. 28, 2008) - Councillors Chad Collins, Scott Duvall, Sam Merulla, Bernie Morelli and Terry Whitehead just issued a press release proposing a salary freeze for Councillors and non-union employees across the mun

Raise the Hammer