What’s a standfirst?
A standfirst (or a deck or sub head) consists of one or two sentences that explain what an article is about. Most of the time standfirsts are placed above the article and given a different typographical treatment (through weight, color or proportion). You’ll see them most often in print and online news media, although more blogs could (and should) use them.
A standfirst from The Mirror newspaper
Why use standfirsts?
Standfirsts are good for readers and writers. When you try to express your article in a single sentence you’re made to scrutinise its underlying point — if you find this difficult then it’s quite likely your writing will confuse the reader. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be writing long articles, just that your text should have a clear purpose.
From the reader’s point of view standfirsts allow them to evaluate whether the article is of interest. They’re a civilised summation of the main text and, as we know, the web should always behave in a gentlemanly fashion. In tabloid writing the standfirst is often sensational in nature, but on the web our reading needs are prosaic; we just want to know what we’re looking at. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you combining a descriptive standfirst with a controversial opinion.
Finally, standfirsts serve a structural purpose. Reading a long article can be like taking a swim in the sea; initially a somewhat daunting prospect as the potential swimmer stands on the sun–baked beach. Take your readers by the hand and invite them to dip their toes in the headline, steady themselves in the standfirst and, finally, dive headlong into the article itself.
Problems with standfirsts: away from the website
So far I’ve written about using standfirsts on your website, but that’s not the only place people are reading your text; they may have subscribed to email notifications, or an RSS feed.
Standfirsts can cause a problem off site, especially with RSS readers; for example, Google Reader’s design encourages you to read without leaving its website, which means we should publish whole articles in our RSS feeds, rather than standfirsts with a link to the canonical URI. We should of course respect readers’ preferences — we can’t force them on to our website.
This isn’t a problem if we’re adding standfirsts manually to our articles (they’ll simply appear in the RSS reader), but some publishing platforms (e.g. WordPress) allow standfirsts to be stored apart from the article text, allowing them to be separated from the article and used on their own.
As a writer you’ll need to make a decision on whether to publish complete articles in your RSS feed. I do just that, but only publish the standfirst in email notifications as I don’t think readers like to read long form texts in their email (incidentally, Nielsen agrees).
Examples of standfirsts
Unsurprisingly, news websites generally make excellent use of standfirsts:
The BBC news site
BBC standfirsts are bolded and sit above the article text
The Guardian website
The Guardian often uses bullet points in its standfirsts
And some blogs also use standfirsts effectively:
Design View
Design view uses long standfirsts that look great and lead the reader into the article
Standfirsts provide a simple way to improve your articles and your reader’s experience. Why not try them out? (Some WordPress themes make it easy to use them).