Headline Checker — Length, Clickbait Flags and Absolute Claims
Headlines carry a disproportionate share of complaints because they are written last, by someone else, and read by far more people than the article beneath them. Clause 1 of the Editors’ Code applies to headlines in their own right — a headline unsupported by the text is a breach whatever the copy says.
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Headline Checker
Check your headline for length, structure, clickbait flags and IPSO accuracy requirements.
Enter a headline above to check it.
How it works
- You type or paste a headline and every metric updates live — nothing is submitted anywhere.
- Character count is banded against search-result truncation: green up to 55, amber from 56 to 70 as “may truncate on mobile”, red above 70 as “truncates on Google”. Word count is shown alongside.
- It reports whether the headline contains a question mark, and separately whether its first word is one of 18 listed imperative verbs (find, discover, learn, stop, start, get, make, build, read, watch, see, try, use, check, avoid, beat, win, save) or one of 6 interrogatives (how, why, what, when, where, who). The two are now reported on separate rows, so a “yes” to the imperative-verb check no longer includes a question word.
- It matches nine literal clickbait phrases — “you won’t believe”, “weird trick”, “doctors hate”, “jaw-dropping” and similar — and displays each one it finds as a flag.
- A regular expression looks for the words always, never, all, every, proves, confirmed, exclusively and reveals; if any appears it shows a standing IPSO Clause 1 note telling you to make sure the story body supports the claim. A second expression flags any of was, were, been or being as “possibly passive”.
When to use it
- On the subs desk, as a fast length check before a headline goes into a template with a hard character limit.
- When a headline has been sharpened in editing and you want the absolute-claim words surfaced before it publishes.
- When writing to a house style that bans clickbait constructions, as a mechanical first pass.
- When a headline is being reused as a social card or search title and the truncation point matters.
What it does not do
- Not legal advice, and not an accuracy check. The Clause 1 headline requirement is that the headline is supported by the text — this tool never sees the text and cannot assess that at all.
- The clickbait list is nine literal strings. Any clickbait phrasing not on that list passes silently, which is most of them.
- The passive-voice test flags any occurrence of was, were, been or being, so ordinary active constructions like “Fire was reported” or “Minister was born in Leeds” are flagged, and genuinely passive headlines built on other verbs are not.
- The absolute-claim list includes “reveals”, a standard news verb, so the Clause 1 prompt fires routinely on headlines containing no absolute claim — and stops meaning much when it does.
- The character bands are about search-result display, not regulation. A headline that fits comfortably in 55 characters can still be seriously misleading, and nothing here would tell you.
More tools
This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.