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Title Generator for Essay

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You’ve poured hours into your essay, carefully crafting each argument, refining your thesis, and ensuring that your conclusion leaves a lasting impression. But there’s still one hurdle left: crafting that perfect title. Titles are often overlooked, but they play an essential role in captivating your readers and setting the stage for your work. Enter the Title Generator for Essay, your next must-have writing tool. Let’s dive deep into the realm of essay titles and discover how our tool can elevate your writing game.

The Significance of a Stellar Essay Title

Before we delve into the features of our Title Generator, let’s understand why titles matter so much:

• First Impressions Count: Your title is the first thing a reader, instructor, or examiner sees. A well-chosen title can intrigue and beckon them into the depth of your essay.
• Summarizes Your Argument: A good title encapsulates the main idea or argument of your essay in a few words.
• Enhances Searchability: If your essay is published online or in a database, a relevant title helps readers find your work when searching for related topics.

Challenges in Crafting Essay Titles

Crafting an engaging and relevant title isn’t as simple as it sounds. Writers often struggle with:

• Keeping titles concise yet informative.
• Avoiding cliches or overused phrases.
• Making sure the title aligns with the essay’s content.
• Striking a balance between creativity and clarity.

Why the Title Generator for Essay is a Game-Changer

This innovative tool is designed to address these challenges head-on:

• Context-Driven: Simply provide your essay’s context, and our tool will deliver a tailored title that aligns seamlessly with your content.
• AI-Powered Precision: Leveraging cutting-edge algorithms, the Title Generator ensures uniqueness and relevance.
• Time-Efficient: No more hours of brainstorming. Get a range of title suggestions in seconds.
• Flexible and Customizable: Whether your essay is argumentative, descriptive, expository, or narrative, our tool caters to all types.

How to Use the Title Generator for Essay

Harnessing the power of our title generator is straightforward:

• Navigate to the Tool: Visit our user-friendly Title Generator for Essay page.
• Enter Essay Context: Describe your essay’s main theme, argument, or subject in the provided field.
• Select Essay Type (optional): If you want a title tailored to a specific type of essay, choose from our dropdown menu.
• Generate: Click the ‘Generate’ button and explore a variety of title suggestions.
• Pick, Tweak, and Finalize: Choose the title that resonates most, customize if needed, and voila – your essay is now ready for the spotlight!

How to write compelling essay titles

• Before trying to come up with a title, make sure you fully understand the core message or argument of your essay.
• Consider your thesis statement or main argument; it can often be a source of inspiration for your title.
• The title should provide a hint or summary of the essay’s content. Misleading titles can confuse or frustrate readers.
• Avoid long-winded titles. Aim for brevity while ensuring that the title still conveys the essence of the essay.
• Using strong verbs can make your title more dynamic. For example, instead of “The Effects of Pollution on Marine Life,” consider “How Pollution Devastates Marine Life.”
• Alliteration can make titles more catchy and memorable. For example, “Fame, Fortune, and Fallacies: The Myth of Celebrity Success.”
• Posing a question can engage the reader’s curiosity. For example, “Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat to Humanity?”
• Overused phrases can make your essay seem unoriginal. Always strive for a fresh and unique title.
• Including pertinent keywords can make your essay more discoverable, especially if it’s being published online.
• Play with Dual Meaning or Puns (when appropriate): This can make your title more interesting, but it should be used judiciously and not forced.
• Consider Your Audience: Ensure the tone and style of your title align with the expectations of your audience. An academic paper will have a different title style compared to a casual blog post.
• Draft Multiple Titles: Don’t settle on the first title that comes to mind. Write down several options, mull over them, or even get feedback from peers.
• Finalize After Writing the Essay: Often, the process of writing the essay will offer clarity or a fresh perspective, making it easier to craft a fitting title.
• Avoid Sensationalism: While it’s important to capture attention, don’t exaggerate or sensationalize just for the sake of drawing readers in. The title should remain true to the content of the essay.

Final Thoughts

An essay’s title can make or break its reception. While the body of your essay provides depth and detail, the title serves as the inviting entryway. With the Title Generator for Essay, you’re not only saving time but also ensuring that your essays get the attention they deserve right from the start. So, the next time you find yourself stumped for a title, let our generator do the heavy lifting!

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Essay Title Generator (Free & No Login Required)

Discover the perfect title for your next essay with our AI-powered Essay Title Generator! Designed for students and writers, this tool creates unique and engaging essay titles based on your topic or main ideas. Simply enter your subject, such as ‘the benefits of renewable energy’, and receive a list of potential titles in seconds.

How to Use the Essay Title Generator

Using the Essay Title Generator is a breeze. Just type in your essay topic, key concepts, or main points into the generator, and with a single click, you’ll receive a variety of title suggestions. Browse through the generated titles and choose the one that best fits your essay’s theme and captures your intended message. Once you’ve found the perfect title, you can use it for your writing assignment, research paper, or academic project. This tool is user-friendly and suitable for writers of all levels, making the process of finding a great title quick and easy.

What is the Essay Title Generator?

The Essay Title Generator is an AI-based tool that creates original and thought-provoking essay titles. By analyzing your input keywords or themes, it generates a range of titles suitable for various academic disciplines and writing styles. This tool is a helpful resource for students and writers looking to create titles that accurately reflect their essay’s content and grab the reader’s attention. Whether you’re working on a persuasive essay, an expository piece, or a narrative essay, these AI-generated titles can provide inspiration and help you get started on your writing journey. The Essay Title Generator aims to simplify the process of finding the perfect title, allowing you to focus on crafting a compelling essay.

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Studying / Writing Tools

Essay Title Generator

Essay titles are not the easiest things to come up with on your own. We know. That’s why we developed our Essay Title Generator to help you create the title your paper deserves. How does it work? Simple. Just enter the topic you’re interested in researching and a random title will be generated from our database based on the parameters you provide.

Why start with a title? Easy. The best way to start your research is to identify a specific focus within your topic—and that’s what a title does. It tells precisely what your paper is going to be about. So if you’re lost and confused about where to start, try our essay title generator.

How to Use our Essay Title Generator

1. Select your "essay topic" or "type of essay" from drop down menu 2. Click the button for "Generate Essay Title." 3. Read the title that our auto-generating system produces. 4. Want more? Click the button for "Generate More Essay Titles." 5. That’s all there is to it! Use our title to help get yourself started on your research.

Essay Title:

Topic not listed in drop down? Search your specific topic

Essay Titles

Why would generating an  essay title  help you get started in your research? Think about it. Picking a focus for your paper is no walk in the park. How do you whittle down a broad topic to a narrow subject? Well, here’s a way! Try thinking of a snappy title first and going from there! Of course, not everybody is good at whipping up a creative title to get the juices flowing. That’s why we’re here to help.

All you have to do is select your topic from the drop down menu. If you have more than one topic in mind, use the generator more than once and get a bundle of titles to pick from. If you go berry-picking you don’t head out with a basket and come back with one berry, do you? NO! You fill that basket up with as many berries as you can find, then you sort them out, select the best ones, and make yourself a delicious berry pie!

That’s what we’re doing here with our essay title generator. We’re helping you to create a great essay by helping you take the first step in that process. Get your title, get your engine revving, and get going!

Important! Don’t stress—no one likes stress, and it doesn’t help anyone—ever! So leave your stress at the door and see for yourself how simple this can be. No more worries that you can’t think of anything, no more fretting over whether you’ll ever be able to focus and create a thesis. This is easy. You tell us the topic. We tell you a title idea. Want another? Click the generator button again. Need another after that? Keep clicking. Our database is filled with great titles that will launch you into the stratosphere of great ideas quick than a SpaceX Falcon rocket. So strap yourself in because we are going for a ride!

Essay Titles Generate Ideas

The title is just the beginning. It’s where the action starts. Getting a great title can be like getting a ray of sunlight that cuts right through the fog. Everything clears up and suddenly you can see where to go. There down in the valley is your essay and laid out in a path all the way to it are the stones that your essay title has tossed out. Look how they stretch out down into the valley of sweet success.

Think about it—that’s what an essay title can do for you! It gets you elevated and out of the haze so that the research becomes accessible. In the dark, you’re fumbling for a way in, unable to find the key. Well, quit fumbling! The essay title is the key. It is the way in. It opens the door for you and turns on the lights. It points you in the right direction so all you need to do is follow the straight and narrow path

As you get started on that path, stop to look around at all the fruit that pops up along the way on the vines and trees that line the path. These are the ideas that our essay titles have been designed to generate in your own mind. You see, our essay title generator is not just a generator of titles: it is a generator of ideas. It supplies the fuel that will get your brain humming and before you know it your imagination will take over and all the information you have at your disposal will suddenly start clicking into place. That’s what a good essay title does, after all. It gets all cylinders firing!

Brainstorming Essay Titles

The brainstorming process is one of the most important steps when it comes to writing. Though some professors say you should wait until after you’re finished writing to come up with a title, the reality is that sometimes starting with a title can jumpstart the brainstorming process. This is especially true when you’re having writer’s block and can’t come up with a focus for your paper. You may have the topic, but where do you go from there? There are a thousand ways you could approach it, so which one do you choose? Or—worse—you can’t think of a single one! How do you know how to start, or, if see some options, how do you know which will get you where you need to go and not end up just getting you lost?

Brainstorming is the key! So how do you brainstorm successfully? You generate ideas! And how do you do that?

Why, you pick your topic, click the generate title button, and let the brainstorming process begin!

These titles have been specially designed to stimulate your brain and get you thinking about all the possibilities to pursue with your topic. Our titles are filled with ideas. They are brimming with possibilities. There are more potential ideas in our titles than there are grains of sand on a sandy beach. Okay, so maybe there aren’t that many—but you get the idea.

Let’s get started! You need a title, and we have the answer: our essay title generator will give you exactly what you need to get going. Don’t even think about how to come up with that perfect, snappy title. Just enter in your topic and click the button. Our titles will keep you coming back for more and keep you buzzing with ideas. We’re sure you’ll find one that hits you the right way and gives you the spark to get started with your research. Our titles help to illuminate the research process. They give you an indication of where you can go and what you can do. As soon as you feel like you’re getting stuck and need some help, don’t delay. Come get the title you need and deserve. Life’s hard. Don’t wait. Select your topic from the drop down menu and click the blue button. Generate that title, and get some great ideas—let’s go!

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For more book titles, try our custom GPT .

Click the "Get Titles" button above to see titles.

How To Use the AI Essay Title Generator

Our AI essay title generator uses the power of large language models to generate interesting and unqiue titles for your essays. Simply enter a topic in the textbox above and click the "Get Titles" button. A title will be generated for you.

If you almost like a title generated, but want some modifications, you can rewrite the title .

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Persuasive Essay Topics

• Should people with higher income pay more taxes? Why or why not?
• Which class is more important: physical education or music class?
• Uniforms in school: should they be mandatory or should they be banned? Elaborate on your reasoning.
• Should parents and teachers be able to ban certain books from schools?
• Should kids learn sign speech instead of a foreign language at school?
• Home economic classes: why or why not?
• Should recycling be made mandatory?
• Do zoos help or harm animals?
• Should chess be considered a sport?
• Should kids be able to opt out of pledging alliance to the flag?
• Can online school be as effective as traditional school?
• Should kids under 18 be banned from playing dangerous sports like tackle football?
• Informatics and computer classes: why or why not?
• Should it be mandatory to volunteer some hours before graduating high school?
• Should young adults graduating high school take a gap year before going to University? why or why not?

Descriptive Essay Titles and Topics

• The best trip of my life
• My first pet
• My favorite animal
• My favorite meal
• Special memories with grandpa and grandma
• These are the games I play with my friends
• I miss the day when...
• This is why I love my best friend
• This is why I love my family
• What I want to be when I grow up
• The toy I play the most with
• A day at the park
• I went to the dentist
• My last birthday party
• A magical animal
• What I carry in my backpack
• This is my house
• What I like about my teacher

Advanced Topics (Middle and High School Essay Topics):

• If I could meet any celebrity, dead or alive, that would be...
• My daily routine
• The books that I enjoyed the most
• If I was a movie director, this would be the plot of my first movie
• If I was a writer, this would be the plot of my first book
• My dream profession
• My proposal for a new school subject
• What I feel most excited about
• The person who influenced me the most
• Traits that I have in common with my friends
• The world needs a new superhero
• If I was the president of the country this is what I would do
• A perfect week would look like this
• What I would take to an island
• Where I would go if I could travel back in time
• What will the future look like
• A precious memory from childhood
• How can a student make the world a better place?
• What beauty means to me
• What I could be famous for one day
• Google vs Bing: Which is better?
• Teens or 20s: When is the perfect time to start dating?
• Major differences between US English and UK English
• What makes 20th century and 21st century similar?
• Is working from home more efficient than working from the office?
• Freelancing vs Permanent Job
• Comparison between Trump's and Obama's ideas
• Differences between the lifestyle of rich and poor
• Morning vs Evening
• Fashion in winter and summer: Different or the same?
• Effects of healthy food and fast food
• Differences between the lifestyle of people living in a city and people living in a village
• Tall guys against short guys
• True love and fake love
• Long-distance relationship vs short-distance relationship
• Friendship vs. romantic relationships
• Advantages and disadvantages of working till late
• What adults prefer: Reading or watching?
• What is more trendy: TV show or web series?
• What is more fun: Playing games on a computer or on a smartphone?

Argumentative Essay Titles and Topics

• Can smoking be prevented by making tobacco illegal?
• Is global climate change caused by humans?
• Education should be free.
• Is college tuition becoming way too expensive?
• Is religion the cause of war?
• Do we have a fair tax system?
• Should working moms be given special privileges?
• A well-read person isn't necessarily a smart person.
• Are cell phones dangerous?
• Which secondary languages are worth studying today?
• Steroid takers should be banned from team sports activities.
• Are CEOs paid too much?
• Should the government provide health care?
• Beauty magazines should stop photoshopping models.
• Smartphones actually help the learning process.
• Are we too dependent on computers?
• Is homework harmful or helpful?
• Should euthanasia be illegal?
• Alcohol usage should be controlled.
• Is college admission too competitive?
• Does social media fame impact one's life?
• Will paper money be substituted by electronic money?
• Third World War should be prevented by Russian and the US government.
• Are schools and teachers responsible for low test scores?
• Does the educational system prepare students for the real world?

Narrative Essay Topics

• Tell me about your biggest success
• Tell me about your biggest failure
• Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult situation and how you overcame it.
• An experience that left you feeling frustrated, and how you dealt with the feelings.
• If you could have any superpower you wanted, which one would you choose? Elaborate on why and how you would use it.
• Tell me about a random act of kindness that happened to you or somebody else.
• Tell me about an issue that you care about.
• When are you the most happy?
• A time where you had a lot of fun.
• A time when you got lost.
• A time where you were afraid.
• A time where you looked up to your parents.
• Have you ever met a famous person? If you haven't, which famous person would you like to meet and why?
• A time where you stood up for your beliefs.
• A time where you felt really proud of yourself.

Expository Essay Topics

• What is the best way to improve your grades at school?
• How does television influence our perception of reality?
• What is the easiest way to get started in the stock market?
• Who was the best athlete of the 20th century?
• Can videogames really increase violence?
• What's the effect of extended quarantine in our health?
• Is bullying unavoidable in a school setting?
• How to improve your running speed.
• Why are yawns contagious?
• How did dogs really become man's best friend?
• How to be time efficient on college
• Why does super glue dry so fast?
• What was the influence of Sigmund Freud on modern psychology?
• What is the most affordable country in the world?
• Should internet be a basic human right in the 21st century?
• What is the origin of last names?
• Are Marvel movies an accurate representation of the original source?
• What is the biggest crisis the film industry has faced in history?
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Other Options

You can get titles that are more specific to your use case by selecting more options. Just click on the down arrow next to the "More Options" box to get started.

• Tone: By selecting a tone, you can choose whether your title sounds salesy, funny, creative, catchy, serious, and more.
• Use: By selecting a use, you can choose whether your title will be used for marketing, an essay, a newspaper, a book, and more.

Refining Your Titles

You can also refine titles that are generated. By click "More like this" next to a generated title, you can get another title that is similar to the title that was just generated.

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Best Tips on How to Title an Essay

How to Make a Good Title for an Essay

The success of an essay heavily depends on its title. This may not come as a surprise given that the essay title is the first aspect to provide the reader with a sneak peek into the text. It piques our interest to read the paper in the first place and gives us a preview of what to expect from the author.

Our research paper writing help prepared a thorough guide on how to title an essay. Here you may find tips and tricks for developing an effective APA or MLA essay title. So, let's dive straight into the article for more exciting details!

Essay Title Format

During your essay writing process, ensure you know the stylistic requirements before beginning an essay. Knowing the format you need to employ is crucial because different style manuals may have varying requirements. Mostly, you could have used an APA or MLA essay title format. Our service, where you can buy essay online , explains these two in more detail below.

Essay Title MLA

If you're required to create an essay title MLA format, check whether your instructor wants you to make a separate cover page. If not, put a heading at the beginning of your work that includes your name, the name of your professor, the course ID, and, lastly, the date.

On the other hand, if you must present a cover page for your essay title MLA, then you need to include the following:

• The name of the college
• The title of your paper
• The subtitle of your paper, if applicable
• Your first and last name
• Your teacher or professor's name
• The class name or course number
• The date the paper is due

The formatting instructions are as follows:

• Double-spaced
• Times New Roman font
• Size 12 font
• Apart from very short terms, each word's initial letter should be capitalized. The initial word, however, must always be uppercase.
• The title page shouldn't include a header with the page numbers.

Essay Title APA

Having discussed the MLA format essay title, let's explore what the APA student title page includes:

• The paper title
• Author names
• Institutional affiliation where the author carried out the study
• Name and number of the course
• Professor name
• Page number

The title of an essay format instructions:

• double-spaced
• 1" margins
• 12-point Times New Roman
• According to APA, your title should be targeted and brief, without unnecessary words or abbreviations

How to Choose a Good Title for an Essay: Important Qualities

Nobody will read a dull headline. Your title should grab your audience's attention and encourage them to read the rest of the work. As it is one of the initial things readers see, having a strong attention grabber is essential when writing an essay from scratch. To fully understand how to come up with a title for essay that is strong and exciting, let's consider a few following factors:

Employ a Catchy Hook - Usually, the title of essay format follows a similar basic structure, especially if they are used for an academic article. The hook serves as a unique component that attracts the reader. It's a captivating statement informing others about the topic of the essay. You can also explore several types of sentences with examples that can help you develop the ideal hook structure.

Consider Topic Keywords - These are essential terms or expressions pertinent to your subject and help your reader understand the focus and body of your article. These focus keywords should serve as a brief, one- to two-word article summary. You can choose some terms from the research topic your instructor gave you, but after your thesis statement is formed, this is where you should hunt for ideas.

Use a Colon - A colon is frequently used in academic titles to separate concepts and sentences. The standard procedure is to place a clever remark or brief quotation before the colon. Although these beginning words offer flavor, they can be overdone. Because of this, some individuals find using the colon to be repugnant. Therefore be careful not to misuse this method.

Ask a Question - To write essay title that is strong, consider asking a question. But, use it with caution because posing a question will make your tone less formal. As long as the question is suitably phrased to meet the subject of your essay, feel free to employ it. Always check to see if the title question still applies to your points in the essay's body. The thesis statement should be appropriately reflected as well.

Find Inspirational Quotes - There is no formula for selecting essay titles from the textual content. You may get playful and choose any quotation, proverb, or catchphrase that applies to your particular publication and works as a title. You may also create a great essay title using well-known expressions or idioms. Doing so will help your readers relate to and feel more comfortable discussing your subject.

Here are other rules for how to create a good title:

• Title every section of writing: In the process of writing, create interesting subheadings to give your paragraphs an identity. Also, they make your text look ordered and clear. 
• The title must bear the theme of the text: choose a title that summarizes the essay. 
• Capitalize all words with certain exceptions: Capitalize the first letter of every word in the title, but do not capitalize pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.
• Avoid underlining the title: Since topics come in boldface, underlining it will amount to overemphasis. Some authorities say that if you must underline it, do not bolden it.
• Review the final version of the title: Do not forget to do a quick review of the final version of the title—check for grammar, structure, spelling and so on. Re-read it to determine if the title has given justice to the essay. Confirm if the topic is catchy enough to attract your reader’s attention. 
• When using a colon in your title, follow the rules: Since we are dealing with punctuation rules here, let us talk about the colon – when you have two eye-catching topics, separate them with a colon.

Student’s Guide on How to Come Up with a Title for an Essay

Titling an essay can be easy, but there are a few core principles to be taken into account. The following tips will help you stay on track and avoid any common pitfalls.

Essay Goes First

Never start with a title! If you write it before the rest of the text, it will be based on it, and it should be vice versa. Writing an essay before choosing a heading will give you a clear understanding of what should make sense to the reader. Re-read the finished paper several times to decide on the title. The last thing to create is a title - such strategy will give more time to spend on crafting an essay outline, conducting research, or writing the paper itself.

What are you writing about? What is the style of your paper, and is it an academic essay or a free-form essay like a narrative essay? If the topic of your essay is “Do people who commit heinous crimes deserve the death penalty?” your title should not be humorous; it should be strict and to the point.

If your topic is “Why do people like watching funny cat videos?”, feel free to craft a funny title. Determine the tone of your essay and base your title on it—in consideration with the essay’s topic.

The tone can be:

• Serious - “The implications of global warming”
• Funny - “How cats and dogs love their masters”
• Amiable - “Ways to fight depression”
• Persuasive - “Why positive thinking is a must have skill for every person”
• Informative - “Ten rules for creating a chemical at home”

The main goal of a title is to name its paper. There is no need to tell an entire story in the title, or provide any useless details. Sum up your paper in a few words! Another way to do this is to sum up your thesis statement, as it represents the main idea of your essay. Take your thesis and squeeze it into 3-4 words. Imagine that you are creating a title for your favourite newspaper or a slogan for Coca-Cola.

Don’t use fancy words! Take 2-3 main words (keywords), put them together, and stop wasting your time. Avoid jargon and abbreviations.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that can help any student and young writer reap benefits. While working on a title, detect the words related to the central idea of the paper. Type the words into the search field of Google and add the word “quote.” A search engine will show numerous web pages with in-text quotations that could be useful. Select the fragment you like. It is possible to learn how to make a creative title for an essay in this way.

Discover several more tips from experts:

• Never forget the “What,” “Who,” “When,” “How,” “Why,” and “Where” questions (if you start with one of these questions, your title has a chance of getting noticed);
• Come up with an unexpected image not related to the selected topic;
• Sometimes, starting with a lie increases the chances of a title being able to catch an eye;
• Review our catchy essay title examples.

Need Some Help With Your Essay's Title?

Feel free to contact EssayPro and we will provide you with a writing help at a moment’s notice. With the years of essay writing experience, titling becomes second nature, so you no longer need to worry about having a catchy headline on your paper.

Essay Title Examples: Bad vs Good

The strongest essay titles condense lengthy essays into concise statements. When wondering how to make an essay title, think carefully about your stylistic choices and essay format to produce an excellent one. Our dissertation help has provided essay title examples to let you understand the difference between good and bad ones more vividly.

Bad Essay Title Examples

As we discussed how to create an essay title and the specific elements that go into it, you should have a clear idea of how important it is to craft a strong title. In contrast, first, look at weak essay title ideas that can break your paper. This should serve as an example of why your heading should not be like this:

Ex 1: ' How Television Has Changed Our World ' - too vast and not informative

Ex 2: 'The Ara Pacis Augustae' - unclear for those who don't know Latin

Ex 3: 'The Most Poisonous Frog' - does not provide any insight

Ex 4: 'A Brief History of Subcultures and How They Manifest Themselves in a Constantly Changing Socio-Economic Environment' - too long and complicated

Ex 5: 'The Little Mermaid 29 Years Later: Selling a Harmful Sexist Message Through a Naughty Image' - inappropriate language

Good Essay Title Examples

Now that you know what a bad essay title looks like, let's explore good essay title examples as their substitutes. Examine the following essay title format styles that will give you a clear understanding.

Ex 1: ' The Electronic Babysitter: A Social History of Uses of the Television' - gives an exact description of what the essay will be about

Ex 2: ' The Modern Historical Significance of the Ara Pacis Augustae to the City of Rome' - here, the reader can understand what they will be reading about

Ex 3: ' A Deadly Beauty: The Evolution of Skin Coloration and Toxicity of the Poisonous Dart Frog' - clear, informative, and on-point.

Ex 4: 'Reconsidering Counterculture in Contemporary Society' - informative enough and brief

Ex 5: 'The Projection of Gender Stereotypes in The Little Mermaid' - employs appropriate language

Catchy Essay Title Ideas

You now understand that long, complicated headlines do not accurately convey the paper's main idea. Take ample time to consider the word choice before tilting your work. How do you create good essay titles? Think creatively and with common sense. But meanwhile, for your convenience, we compiled title ideas for essays you may use as inspiration.

Persuasive Essay Titles

• Why Receiving College Education is Important: Examining Long-term Benefits
• Face-to-Face Courses Cannot Be Replaced by Online Learning
• An MBA Does Not Ensure Corporate Success.
• Every Company Should Adopt a Green Strategy.
• Energy Drinks Represent a Lucrative Market Segment.
• Aircraft, Excess Weight Charges, Need to be Prohibited.
• Patients' Life Shouldn't be Put to Death by Nurses.
• Google Glasses May Increase the Number of Auto Accidents.
• All of the Conventional Malls Will Soon be Replaced By Online Shopping
• How Do Team-building Exercises Contribute to the Development of Inventions?
• Illegal immigrants are entitled to remain in the US.

Academic Essay Titles

• Several English Dialects: The Link Between Various Cultures
• Instagram: A social media innovation
• Is it possible to reverse drug-induced brain damage, and if so, how?
• What the Future Holds for Humans in the Light of Artificial Intelligence
• The Story of Two Nations after Decades of Conflict: North and South Korea
• Video Games and Their Learning Context in Schools
• Free Wi-Fi: Strategies for Enhancing the City's Economy

Strong Research Paper Titles

• Digital World Cybersecurity
• E-business to Provide New Paths for Booksellers
• Outsourcing for Large Businesses
• Preparing for College Costs for High School Students
• What News Reporters Should Do in the Digital Age and How to Do It: Examples
• The Transformative Power of Music: How Heavy Metal Impacted My Life

Best Essay Titles for College Students

• The Possible Benefits and Risks of Artificial Intelligence for Humans
• The Potential for Time Travel in Virtual Reality
• What Role Has Mathematics Played in Human History?
• How to Succeed in the Real Estate Industry
• E-Commerce: An Empire of Virtual Businesses Worth Millions of Dollars
• How to Achieve Financial Independence in the Digital Age Without Opening a Real Business

More Creative Titles for Essays

• When getting rewarded for their grades, would kids do better left alone?
• How Does Fake News Impact the Mainstream press?
• Homelessness in Contemporary Society: A Dilemma
• What News Reporters' Best Job Is in the Digital Age and How to Uphold It
• Elon Musk: Brilliant Mind or Insane Person?
• Positives and Negatives of Employing a Smoker
• Do We Employ the Appropriate Student Success Metrics?

Professional Academic Help

Now that you know how to make a good title for an essay, you should also understand that you should approach the task as a process. While composing your essay title, you must condense your whole thesis and point of discussion into a single, concise, yet powerful sentence. If you have time before your deadline, give it some thought and don't hurry.

Don't forget that you can always rely on our professional academic assistance, whether you need a reflection paper , ideas for a strong essay title, or any other academic papers. Consider the following words - write my essay for me - magic keywords for delegating your most complex tasks to our skilled writers!

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How To Title An Essay?

How to title an essay in mla format, what are some good titles for an essay.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Related Articles

How to Title an Essay

Well, neither does your teacher, professor, or boss. The difference is that they don’t have a choice and have to. A good title helps you stand out, and that’s part of the reason why a title is so important. Just knowing the right way to title an essay can boost your grades! 

A good title has to grab the reader’s attention. It’s the first thing someone sees, so think of it as your first opportunity to impress. The title needs to be catchy but focused on the content of your essay. A good title is simple yet informative. Sounds tough? Don’t worry, this article will cover all you need to know about how to title an essay perfectly. 

How to Choose a Good Title for an Essay

A good title makes a reader think “Yes! I want to read the rest of this!” but a title also has to accurately reflect the content of the paper. It’s not just students, one of the differences between an average writer and an expert is how well they can write a title. If you want to work in social media, advertising, or any kind of content writing, learning how to write a title for an essay is an essential skill to have. 

There are two main components of a good essay title.

Catchy Hook

Anyone that’s ever written anything knows that having a catchy hook in your introduction is a requirement, but most people forget that you can include a hook in the title itself. Remember, you want to stand out and differentiate yourself from the competition. 

There are a few places to hunt for keywords to fit into your title. The essay prompt or research question is a good place to start but using words in your thesis statement ensures that your topic accurately reflects the main point of your essay. The use of keywords like this ensures that your title reflects what the essay is about. You’ll know you’ve found the right keywords if they seem like two or three word summaries of the main point of your essay. 

How to Come up With a Title for an Essay

How to create a title for an essay in a way that makes it stand out from the crowd requires creativity, hard work, and time. That may seem like a lot just for a title, but it’s worth it. Follow these bits of advice and craft the perfect title!

Write your title at the end

Just because the title is the first thing someone reads doesn’t make it the first thing you should write! Coming up with a good title is tough and requires a deep understanding of the content of the paper. That means it’s usually better to write the title at the end after you’re done with a couple of drafts of your paper. 

Though it’s good to write according to a plan, often, new thoughts can take your essay in an unexpected direction, this is another reason why its good to start with a working title as a placeholder and go back to write the final title at the end. 

Use your thesis 

A good title hints at what the thesis statement will be. A thesis statement is a summary of the main argument and purpose of the paper, so use your thesis statement as a source of inspiration for your title. This makes sure that your title has predictive power since it’s drawn from the thesis statement itself. 

Simple but not too simple

There is no rule about how long a good title should be - there are benefits to short titles and benefits to long titles. Short titles are direct and clear and better suited for simpler, straightforward essays. Longer titles may be more appropriate for complex or very specific essays. No matter what though, make sure that your titles are easy to understand. 

Make sure your title is specific

A title that’s too general may seem like it’s describing your essay, but it isn’t. Is your essay just about “Mobile Gaming in 2020” or is it about “The Impact of Coronavirus Lockdowns on the FTP Mobile Game Industry”? The first title may be short and to the point, but it doesn’t give enough specific information about the content of the essay. Remember, a good title hints at what the essay is going to be about, but also intrigues the reader. Generic and broad titles don’t do that. 

Your title needs to be believable 

Just because a lot of titles you see on the internet are clickbait, doesn’t mean that you need to write an over the top title as well. Especially if you’re writing a paper for academia, make sure your title doesn’t over-promise what you’re going to cover in the essay. 

Write your title in the active voice

Write your title in the active voice, that is, the subject acts upon the verb rather than the subject receives a verb's action. Writing in the active voice uses fewer words and is more concise and engaging - perfect for writing a catchy title. 

Rewrite famous movies, books, quotes, phrases, quotations, etc. 

Creativity is an important element of coming up with a catchy title. If you can find a famous phrase that you can rework into the perfect title for your essay, go for it! For example, a paper about mitosis and meiosis (cell division) can be titled “Live Long and Prosper”.

Match the style and tone of your essay

It wouldn’t make sense to have an amusing title for an essay about a refugee crisis. Make sure that your title reflects the tone of your essay. Some titles work better depending on the essay style. For example, the title of a persuasive essay would be different than the title of a reflective essay. 

Who’s the audience?

Of course, how you title an essay depends on who you’re writing it for. A blog post targeted towards your friends or prospective followers is going to have a different title than an essay for your stuffy old history teacher. Your young science teacher who loves memes and blows up things in class might appreciate a different type of title. A university application essay usually needs to be more formal. Try and find out as much as you can about who is going to read your essay and cater both your essay and title to them. 

To use or not to use: Colons in essay titles

Using a colon to separate an essay title into two sections used to be the norm. It became so common in fact, that now they are considered cliche. There may be a few occasions when using a colon is just perfect, but avoid overusing it. The best way to use a colon is by inserting a creative phrase or clever quote behind the colon. For example, the title of this section. 

Use evocative imagery

An easy way to make your title catchy is by using imagery. If you can make the reader imagine something in their mind based on your title, you’re starting off with a win. “Stepping into the void: The first spacewalk” is a much better title than simply “The first spacewalk. 

These tips should help you answer how to come up with an essay title!

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Common Titling Mistakes

The deadline is racing towards you and you still don’t have a title! After panicking and writing whatever pops into your head, check to make sure you don’t do any of the following.

• Either bold your title or underline it  -  Doing both is overkill and rather than stressing the title, makes it look cluttered and messy.
• Don’t make your title too short - A good title should let the reader predict what the essay is going to be about.
• Don’t make your title too long.- A long title might give more information about the essay, but it can be cluttered and overloaded with dense information.
• Don’t use slang, jargon, or abbreviations - You want to make sure that the title is clear. If the teacher has to look up a word in your title, you’re starting off badly. 
• Don’t get too personal - Your title should entice the reader. Whatever strong arguments you want to make should be made in the body of the essay.  ‍

Make sure your title reflects the content of the essay - This often happens when the title is written first and then the essay. Start with a placeholder title and after the essay is done, work on creating a title that accurately reflects the main purpose of the essay. 

Improved Essay Titles

You might have an idea about what the title should be as you’re working on your essay, but there are still things to watch out for. Sometimes the perfect title pops into your head fully formed, but more often than not, a good title takes thought, effort, time, and several rewrites. Make sure to set aside some time just to work on the title. 

An Exploration of the Best Way to Spend Time During Lockdown Based on Personal Experience

This title might do a good job of explaining what the essay is about but it’s too long and wordy.

Better title: My Lockdown Chronicles: What to do With Unexpected Free Time

An Analysis of Avengers: Endgame

This title is too broad. The topic is interesting but there’s no hook to engage the reader.

Better title: Why Avengers: Endgame is Modern Storytelling at its Best 

Badly Breaking the myths about drug overdose 

This title seems forced. The topic is very serious, so trying to use a pun in the title can come across as incongruent. It also depends on the reader knowing the show Breaking Bad and making the connection. Depending on the audience, this might be the perfect title though, so make sure to consider your audience when writing and titling an essay. 

Better Title: An Analysis of Drug Overdose Deaths in the 2010s

The Best Colorful Birds

This title doesn’t give any specific information or talk about what the reader can expect to learn from the essay.

Better Title: Why Birds of Paradise Evolved to Become the Brightest Birds

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Essay Title Ideas

Catchy essay title examples

A catchy title can start your reader off intrigued, entertained, and overall, just in a positive state of mind. That’s a good way to get noticed and boost your grade on the essay! Here are some examples of attention-grabbing essay titles.

Underage Romance: An Analysis of the Ages of William Shakespeare’s Characters 

An Alien Among Us: What if Superman Was Real?

The Day the Planet Caught a Virus

The Rise and Fall of the Alpha Male

Memes Before the Internet

College Essay Title examples

When answering a college essay, make sure you read and follow the instruction carefully. Not following the often very strict requirements is. Generally speaking the tone of the essay, and therefore the title should be more serious but don’t be afraid to let your personality come through. Have a look at these examples.

Why Building Houses in a Third World Country was Unsatisfying

The Daily Struggles of an International Student

Energy Equals MC Hammer: My First Day of Dance Class

A Showdown Between William Shakespeare and Hamilton

Mahatma Gandhi’s Disobedience Without Violence

Argumentative Essay Title Examples

An argumentative essay is an opportunity to convince the reader about your view on a topic. Since the goal of an argumentative essay is to make an argument using facts, research, and logic, your title should state your position on the issue. These examples should steer you in the right direction. 

Artificial Intelligence Will Not Matrix Humanity

The Best Soup Is Your Grandmother’s

Oh, the Humanity: Why the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

Scientific Backing for the Benefits of Video Games

Trial and Error: Better Than the Scientific Method?

Persuasive Essay Title Examples

A persuasive essay appeals to emotions to influence the reader. The main difference between an argumentative essay and a persuasive essay is that an argumentative essay uses facts and research while a persuasive essay relies on emotional appeals. How do these title examples make you feel?

A Glamorous Path to Self Hatred: Modern Beauty Standards

Surreptitious Racism and Why It’s More Difficult to Erase

Saving the Planet, One Tree at a Time

The Natural Way to Heal: Ayurvedic Medicine

Testing the Uneducated: Medical Testing in Third World Countries

Narrative Essay Title Examples

Narrative essays can be thought of as short stories. They ask a writer to share an experience clearly and concisely while making a clear point. The titles of these essays can be more playful and ambiguous. Take a look at some examples.

The Pleasure of Discovering an Amazing New Anime

A Missed Opportunity: Why I Didn’t Attend My Uncle’s Funeral

When my Teacher Became a Father Figure

How Being Bullied Made Me a Kinder Adult

Bloody Victory: My First Mixed Martial Arts Win

Research Paper Title Examples

Research papers test your ability to find credible sources and synthesize complex information into a well-structured format. These are almost exclusively academic, and as such, have formal titles. The first versions of these titles often end up being very long, so spend some time whittling away any extra information. Take a look at the examples below. 

The Effects of Caffeine on Attention and Sleep

Experimental Evidence for the Use of Music in Boosting Agricultural Yields

Not Stinky: Bathing Culture in Ancient China

The Impact of Western Media on 13 to 30-Year-Olds in Asia 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: A Guide on How to Plan Ahead

English Essay Titles Examples

Writing a title for an English essay doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, if you’re studying literature, you should take the opportunity to flex your creative writing skills. Don’t overdo it though! Titles still need to be predictive, comprehensible, and engaging. Examples down below. 

Akala: A Modern Day Shakespeare

Why We’re Already Living in the Brave New World

The Impact of Foreign Writers on Modern English Literature

The Terrifying Origins of Folk Tales

The Times They Are a-Changing: Analyzing Mark Twain’s Writings in 2019

Quick Recap

A great title piques the interest of the reader and starts their journey at a high point. Whether it’s online or for school, you have to find a way to stand out from the very beginning. A good title takes time and effort, but coming up with the perfect title can also be fun, and it absolutely makes a difference to your grade. 

Ask these questions to make sure that your title is good. 

• Does the title predict what the paper is about?
• Does the title use keywords effectively?
• Does the title accurately reflect the tone of the essay?
• Is the title appropriate for the audience?
• Is the title interesting?

Remember these tips when brainstorming an essay title. 

• Think of an interesting hook
• Use keywords (Your thesis is a good place to look)
• Write your title after you’ve written the essay, not before
• Simple but not too simple, it should be predictive
• Use as few words as possible while being informative and interesting
• Keep it believable
• Match the tone and style of your essay
• Think about the audience
• Use imagery
• Rework a popular phrase
• Use active voice
• Avoid unnecessary words and jargon
• Avoid abbreviations ‍

The title of your essay can make or break your grade, so it's important to choose one that is attention-grabbing and relevant to your topic. If you're struggling to come up with a good title, don't worry! Studyfy has compiled a list of over 300 essay topics to inspire you. And if you still need help with your essay, including proofreading and editing, or if you need to " pay someone to do my essay ", Studyfy's team of experts is always available to help. They offer dissertation writing services , research paper service , and even have an admission essay writer to help you get into your dream school. Just reach out to them for all your academic needs!

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Need a catchy title for your paper? Our creative Essay Title Generator can help you. Just enter your abstract and get endless suggestions for creative and relevant titles. Turn your paper into a perfect one with LogicBalls's Research Paper Title Maker.

What is an Essay Title Generator

A Title Maker for Essay is an online tool that helps students and writers come up with catchy and informative titles for their essays and papers. It works by taking a few keywords or phrases as input and then generating a list of possible titles. Some Essay Title Idea Generators even allow you to specify the type of essay you are writing (e.g., argumentative, persuasive, expository) and the target audience.

You can use an essay title generator to find a suitable title for your academic paper, blog post, article, or any other type of writing.

How Does Title of Essay Generator Work

Our free essay title generator tool uses artificial intelligence to analyze your input and generate a list of relevant titles based on your topic, style preferences, and other parameters.

• Enter Keywords: Start by entering some keywords that describe the main theme or idea of your essay.
• Select Tone: Select from various tone options, whether you want your headline to be informative, entertaining, persuasive, or any other tone that suits your content.
• Generate Titles: Click the “Generate” button, and generate a range of title suggestions that are catchy, original, and optimized for your essay.

If you need some title ideas for your blog post, you can use the blog title generator. Or struggling with ideas for your new blog, use the blog ideas generator.

Why Use a Free AI Essay Title Generator?

Using a title maker for an essay offers several benefits to students, writers, researchers, and anyone involved in academic writing. Here are some of the key advantages:

• Saves Time: Coming up with a catchy and original title can be a challenging task. A good essay title generator streamlines the process, providing you with a list of potential titles in seconds, saving you valuable time and effort.
• Boost Interest with Creative Titles: Creative and well-crafted titles are more likely to capture the interest of your readers. The creative essay title generator helps you create titles that intrigue and engage readers, increasing the likelihood that they will read your essay.
• Improve Grades with Relevant Titles: Relevant titles are essential for academic writing, as they reflect the main argument and purpose of your essay. A free essay title generator can help you create relevant titles by including keywords and phrases that align with your essay, which can improve your grades.
• Variety of Titles for Different Styles: Different types of essays require different titles. For example, a persuasive essay may need a title that is catchy and persuasive, while an informative essay may need a title that is informative and descriptive. The free AI essay title generator produces a variety of title options for you to choose from, allowing you to match your title with your essay style.
• Professionalism: Well-crafted titles contribute to the professionalism and credibility of your essay. A research paper title maker can help you achieve a polished and refined look for your academic papers.
• Ensures Clarity: A good title should give readers a clear idea of what the essay is about. A good essay title idea generator can help you create an accurate and informative title.

Why Choose Our Title For an Essay Generator?

Are you in search of a catchy essay title generator that offers exceptional features and is incredibly user-friendly, all without costing you a dime or requiring any registration? Look no further. Our AI-powered essay title generator is the perfect solution for you. Here's why you should choose our tool:

• Write Titles in 50+ Languages: We understand that a diverse global audience writes essays in various languages. Our creative essay title generator supports over 50 languages, ensuring that you can craft titles in your preferred language effortlessly.
• Endless Title Ideas: Our free essay title generator offers a wide array of titles to pick from, ensuring you'll never run out of fresh ideas. With an ever-expanding database of creative suggestions, you can rely on our AI essay title generator as a constant source of inspiration to keep your essays original and interesting.
• Add Keywords in Titles: Create titles that not only grab attention but also look relevant. Keywords add a touch of specificity to your titles. With our essay title idea generator, you can easily add keywords to your titles to make them more descriptive and optimized for your essay.
• User-Friendly Interface: We've designed our title maker for essay tool to be incredibly user-friendly. You don't need any technical expertise to get started. It's intuitive, and generating essay titles is as simple as inputting your keywords and selecting your subject.
• 100% Free, No Registration: We understand that your time and resources are valuable. That's why our essay name ideas generator is 100% free to use, and there's no need for registration. You can start generating titles right away without any hassle.
• 20+ Diverse Tones for Versatile Styles: Your content's tone can make or break its impact. With over 20 tones to choose from, our title for essay generator helps you tailor your essay titles to convey the right mood, whether it's informative, humorous, urgent, or something else entirely.

Tips and Tricks to Create Catchy and Original Essay Titles

Creating catchy and original essay titles is crucial for capturing the interest of your target audience and enticing them to read your essay. Here are some tips and tricks to help you generate compelling essay titles:

• Understand Your Topic: Know your main argument and the purpose of your essay. Tailor your titles to reflect the main theme or idea of your essay.
• Keep it Short and Sweet: Remember, first impressions matter! Aim for titles under 15 words for maximum impact.
• Use Active Voice: Ditch the passive and make your title sound dynamic. Instead of "The Power of Education," try "Unlocking Potential: Why Education Matters."
• Use Creative Words: Incorporate words that are creative, descriptive, or unusual in your titles to spark curiosity and stand out from the crowd. For example, use words like “Uncover,” “Reveal,” “Explore,” or “Examine.”
• Keyword Optimization: Think of words people might search for related to your topic. Including them helps your essay get discovered.
• Ask a Question: Curiosity piqued! Titles like "How Did the Internet Change the World?" draw readers in.
• Highlight Your Perspective: Convey your point of view or stance on the topic. Let readers know what you are going to argue or prove in your essay.
• Personalization: Tailor your titles to your audience's interests and preferences. Use “you” or “your” to make readers feel directly addressed.
• Punny, But Not Too Cheesy: A well-placed pun can be memorable, like "The Write Stuff: Tips for Crafting Stellar Essays."
• Numbers Are Eye-Catching: "5 Ways to Combat Climate Change" visually stands out and suggests a clear structure.
• Be Specific: Give readers a clear idea of what your essay is about. "The Rise of Artificial Intelligence" is more informative than "Technology's Impact."

Tips for Using Essay Title Generator to Your Benefit

Using a title maker for an essay can be a great way to come up with catchy and original titles for your essays. However, you should also know how to use it to your benefit and avoid some common pitfalls. Here are some tips for using an essay title idea generator effectively:

• Be Specific: Enter keywords that are relevant and specific to your essay topic. Avoid vague or general terms that may generate irrelevant or misleading titles.
• Be Creative: Experiment with different combinations of keywords, subjects, and tones. Try to find titles that are unique, interesting, and catchy. You can also use synonyms, antonyms, or related words to generate more variations.
• Be Selective: Don't settle for the first title that you see. Browse through the list of suggestions and pick the one that suits your essay best. You can also refresh the list by clicking the button again if you want more options.
• Be Flexible: Don't be afraid to modify or tweak the titles that you generate. You can add, remove, or change words, punctuation, or capitalization to make the titles more suitable for your essay. You can also combine or split titles to create new ones.
• Be Careful: Don't rely solely on the good essay title generator to create your titles. You should always check the quality and relevance of the titles before using them for your essay. You should also make sure that the titles are not plagiarized or infringe on any intellectual property rights. You can use plagiarism checkers or search engines to verify the originality of the titles.

Frequently Asked Questions

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How to Find a Catchy Title for Your Paper/Essay

Last Updated: February 23, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Stephanie Wong Ken, MFA . Stephanie Wong Ken is a writer based in Canada. Stephanie's writing has appeared in Joyland, Catapult, Pithead Chapel, Cosmonaut's Avenue, and other publications. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Creative Writing from Portland State University. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 1,070,727 times.

Coming up with an effective title can end up being the most difficult part of your essay. A catchy title can make your paper stand out from the pile and give your reader a sense of the content, slant, and perspective of your essay. To craft a strong title, you need to focus on the three elements of a standard title: the hook, the key terms, and the source or location. This structure applies specifically to academic essays, but you can also apply this structure to narrative essays.

Understanding the Structure of a Title

• The hook can be collection of keywords, an image, a play on words, or a quote from your essay.

• Keep in mind good titles never state the obvious or contain generic terms or phrases. Titles like “Paper on 1950s China” or “Report on Shakespeare” are too general and do not give the reader a sense of the content of your paper. Avoid general and non specific terms like “society” “culture” “the world” or “mankind” in your title.

• For example, a paper about Mao’s Great Leap Forward in Communist China in the late 1950s may have a title that has a hook (catchy phrase), one or two key terms, and the source or location (1950s Communist China). A possible title could be: “The Failure of One, the Fall of Many: Mao’s Great Leap Forward in 1950’s Communist China”.

Using Keywords or Images

• For example, the title of an essay about the Great Leap Forward might be something simple, professional, and clear, such as: "The Failure of the Great Leap Forward: China in the late 1950s". An essay about Shakespearean comedy may be more playful, such as: " Love's Labour Lost and Other Comedies."

• For example, an essay about the Great Leap Forward in 1950s China may focus on the failed use of industries like steel and farming by Mao’s government and the resulting mass famine in China. Three words that sum up the paper may be: steel, land, famine. A possible title of the essay could be: “Steel, Land, and Famine: The Failure of the Great Leap Forward”.

• Look for two to three keywords that are short, descriptive, and clear. Consider if the words fit together in some way, or how they are very different. For example, your introduction on 1950s China may have keywords like “industrialization” “collectivization” and “collapse”. A possible title for the essay could then be: “The Collapse of Collectivization in 1950s China”.
• In an essay on the conventions of Shakespearean comedy, the tone of the essay may be less serious or rigid, and you can look for keywords that are playful or humorous. For example, your conclusion may have keywords like “lovers” “obstacles” and “improbable” or “supernatural”. A possible title for the essay could then be: “Lovers in an Improbable Situation: The Conventions of Shakespearean Comedy.”

• For example, a paper about a volcano could have the title: “The Day the Earth Bled: The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius”.

Using a Quote or a Play on Words

• For example, an essay on Shakespearean comedy may quote A Midsummer Night’s Dream , where a character named Theseus professes his love to his betrothed, the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. “Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword/ And won thy love doing thee injuries,/ But I will wed thee in another key,/With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.”
• A possible title for the essay may then be: “With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling: The Conventions of Shakespearean Comedy”.
• Alternatively, you can look up a key quote or phrase that is not in your essay but reinforces central ideas or themes in your essay. Type keywords from your essay into a search engine, along with the word “quote” and see what comes up. You can then take a fragment of the quote and use it in your title.
• For example, for an essay on Mao’s Great Leap Forward, you may use quotes from propaganda posters for the Great Leap Forward made by the Mao government, which are available online. A propaganda quote like “Brave the wind and the waves, everything has remarkable abilities” could be shortened to a title like: “Brave the wind and the waves: False Promises by Mao’s The Great Leap Forward”.

• An essay on Shakespearean comedy could use the cliche “laughter is the best medicine” and change it into “laughter is thy best medicine.” A possible title could be: “Laughter is Thy Best Medicine: The Conventions of Shakespearean Comedy”.

• For example, an essay about missionaries in West Africa during the colonial period could have a title that plays on two key words, such as: “Prophets or profits: The European Colonial Invasion of West Africa”.

Community Q&A

• There are also tools available online that can generate essay titles for you based on your topic. However, the effectiveness of these title generators vary and the quality of the titles may not be as high as if you take the time to create your own. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Your title is the first thing readers will look at, so remember it's an important part of your essay! Pick one that really captures what your paper is about.
• Take your time picking a good title. If you're stuck, take a break and come back to it later.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-a-hook/
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398294/
• ↑ http://canuwrite.com/article_titles.php
• ↑ https://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/titles.pdf
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-title/
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/title
• ↑ https://education.seattlepi.com/come-up-catchy-titles-college-essays-2131.html

About This Article

To find a catchy title for your paper or essay, start by thinking of 1 or 2 keywords or phrases to include in the title that applies to the topic of your essay and will hook your reader in. You can also try looking for a key quote or phrase and using part of it in your title. Alternatively, reword a cliche or familiar phrase so that it is specific to your essay. To give your title some punch, use a play on words or double entendre, like “Prophets or profits: The Colonial Invasion of West Africa,” which will show off your creativity. For more tips from our Writing reviewer, like where and how to find good keywords to use, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Get a title to honor your paper., writefull's title generator processes your abstract and generates a suitable title., paste in your abstract and hit 'generate title'., frequently asked questions about the title generator.

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Essay Title Generator

Essay title generator – unleash your creativity.

Generate creative and engaging essay titles easily with our Essay Title Generator. Perfect for students and writers seeking inspiration.

Crafting the perfect title for your essay can be just as challenging as writing the essay itself. That’s where the Essay Title Generator steps in – a tool designed to spark creativity and provide a starting point for your writing journey.

At Essay Title Generator, we understand the struggle that comes with starting an essay. The title is not just a label; it’s the first impression, the hook that captures the essence of your work and engages the reader. Whether you’re a student grappling with academic essays or a writer exploring various topics, the right title can make a significant difference in how your work is perceived.

Our tool leverages the power of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate thought-provoking and relevant titles. With a focus on simplicity and effectiveness, it’s tailored to inspire you, offering a plethora of ideas that resonate with your essay’s theme. Imagine the ease of having a list of potential titles at your fingertips, saving you time and sparking your imagination.

Think about the last time you struggled to title your essay. How long did you stare at a blank screen? How often did you rewrite that one line? The Essay Title Generator alleviates this challenge, offering an array of titles with just a few clicks. It’s more than just a tool; it’s a companion in your creative process.

Our goal is to streamline your writing process, starting from the very beginning. The Essay Title Generator is designed to offer a blend of creativity and practicality, ensuring that your essay stands out. So, the next time you find yourself pondering over the right words to crown your work, remember, a seamless, inspiring solution is just a click away.

Table of Contents

About the Essay Title Generator Tool

In the realm of essay writing, the inception of your work begins with a title. It is the gateway to your thoughts, the first glimpse into your argument or narrative. This is where the Essay Title Generator tool, a cornerstone feature of our website, comes into play. This innovative tool is not just a random title maker; it is an advanced, user-friendly platform that employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate meaningful and relevant essay titles.

How the Tool Works

The Essay Title Generator is built on the foundation of NLP, a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the interaction between computers and human languages. NLP enables the tool to understand, interpret, and generate human language in a way that is both meaningful and contextually relevant. When you input keywords or a topic into the tool, it processes this information using complex algorithms to create a list of potential titles.

These algorithms analyze patterns and structures in language, drawing from an extensive database of words, phrases, and commonly used linguistic structures in essay titles. By understanding the nuances of language, the tool can create titles that are not only unique but also resonate with the topic you are exploring. This makes each suggested title more than just a string of words; it’s a reflection of your essay’s core idea and purpose.

Benefits of Using the Essay Title Generator

• Saves Time: Brainstorming a compelling title can be time-consuming. Our tool streamlines this process, providing you with multiple title options within seconds.
• Sparks Creativity: Sometimes, all you need is a little nudge in the right direction. The generated titles can serve as a source of inspiration, helping you to develop more focused and creative ideas for your essay.
• Enhances Essay Relevance: A well-crafted title directly influences the perceived relevance of your essay. The titles generated by our tool are designed to be closely aligned with your essay’s content, making your work more appealing to readers.
• User-Friendly: The tool is designed for ease of use. Regardless of your technological expertise, you can navigate and utilize this tool effectively.
• Adaptable to Various Essay Types: Whether it’s a narrative, descriptive, expository, or persuasive essay, the tool is capable of generating titles that suit different types of essays and writing styles.
• A Learning Aid: For students and novice writers, the tool is not just a convenience but a learning aid. It demonstrates how effective titles are constructed, offering insights into the art of title formulation.

In conclusion, the Essay Title Generator tool is more than just a utility; it’s a bridge between your ideas and their expression. It respects the complexity of language and the creativity of essay writing, providing a synergy of technology and artistry. As you embark on your essay writing journey, let this tool be your guide, transforming the daunting task of title selection into an exciting leap into your creative endeavor.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using the Essay Title Generator

Navigating the Essay Title Generator is a seamless and intuitive process, designed to make your journey from a blank page to an inspiring title as effortless as possible. Here’s a straightforward guide on how to use this innovative tool, along with some tips to extract the best possible titles for your essays.

Step 1: Access the Tool

Begin by visiting our website and locating the Essay Title Generator tool. It’s prominently featured on our homepage for easy access.

Step 2: Enter Your Keywords or Topic

In the provided input field, type in the keywords or the main topic of your essay. These words should capture the essence of your essay and are crucial in generating a relevant title. For example, if you’re writing about the impact of climate change on marine life, your keywords could be ‘climate change,’ ‘marine life,’ ‘impact.’

Step 3: Generate Titles

Once you’ve entered your keywords, click the ‘Generate Title’ button. The tool will process your input and use its NLP algorithms to produce a list of potential titles.

Step 4: Select Your Title

Review the suggested titles. The tool will provide a variety of options, from which you can select the one that best fits your essay’s content and tone.

Step 5: Customize if Necessary

If needed, you can tweak the chosen title to better suit your essay. The tool aims to inspire, and a bit of personal touch can make the title perfect for your work.

Tips for Best Results

• Be Specific with Keywords: The more specific your keywords, the more tailored the title suggestions will be.
• General terms may yield too broad a range of titles.
• Use Key Themes: Think about the central themes or arguments of your essay and include them as keywords.
• Keep it Short: Limit your keyword entry to a few words or a short phrase to avoid overwhelming the tool.

Example Scenario

Case Study: A student writing an essay on ‘Renewable Energy Sources in the 21st Century’ uses keywords like ‘renewable energy,’ ‘21st century,’ ‘sustainable sources.’ The generator then comes up with titles like “Navigating Renewable Energy: Sustainable Sources for the 21st Century” and “The Future of Energy: Embracing Renewables in the 21st Century.”

Using the Essay Title Generator is about merging technology with your creative process. It’s an aid designed to enhance your writing journey, providing a starting point that resonates with your content and sparks your imagination. With each use, you’ll find navigating the tool becomes a natural part of your essay-writing ritual.

Importance of a Good Essay Title

The journey of writing an essay is punctuated with various crucial steps, but perhaps none is as underestimated yet vital as crafting the perfect title. A title is more than just a heading; it’s the first impression, a decisive moment where readers decide whether to continue reading or move on. The significance of a good essay title cannot be overstressed, as it plays a pivotal role in the success and reception of your essay.

First Impressions Count

A title is the initial point of contact between your essay and its potential reader. Just as one dresses appropriately for an interview to make a good first impression, an essay must have a title that immediately captures attention. A compelling title acts like a window, offering a glimpse into the soul of your essay. It sets the tone and expectation, priming the reader for what lies ahead. A mundane or uninspiring title might lead to your essay being overlooked, regardless of the quality of its content.

Engagement and Curiosity

Engagement begins with curiosity, and a well-crafted title is a tool to pique the interest of the reader. It acts as a hook, intriguing the audience and sparking their curiosity. A title like “The Unseen Consequences of Climate Change” invites the reader to explore a possibly unconsidered aspect of a well-known issue. The title should entice the reader, promising them new insights and perspectives.

Reflecting the Content

A good title is a summary of your essay in a nutshell. It should be a distillation of the essence of your work. This doesn’t mean it has to be plain or direct; rather, it should encapsulate the central theme or argument in an engaging way. Titles that mislead or don’t align with the content can disappoint or confuse readers, detracting from the trustworthiness and credibility of the essay.

Keywords and Discoverability

In the digital age, where many essays are accessed online, titles play a crucial role in discoverability. Titles that incorporate relevant keywords improve the essay’s visibility on search engines and academic databases. This aspect is particularly important for students and researchers who want their work to be easily found and accessed.

Memorability

An effective title is memorable. It sticks in the reader’s mind, prompting them to think about the essay long after they’ve read it. Memorable titles often use literary devices such as alliteration, metaphors, or puns. For example, “Fahrenheit 451: The Temperature at Which Books Burn” by Ray Bradbury is not only descriptive but also intriguing and memorable.

Connection with Success

There is a direct correlation between a good title and the success of an essay. Academic essays with striking titles tend to be cited more often, as they catch the attention of other scholars and researchers. In more informal settings, a compelling title can be the difference between an essay that is widely read and shared and one that languishes in obscurity.

Tips for Essay Writing

Writing an essay can be a challenging yet rewarding process. Whether you are a student, a budding writer, or someone who needs to craft an essay for professional purposes, understanding the nuances of essay writing is essential. This comprehensive guide offers valuable tips, discusses different types of essays, and provides insights into structuring your essay effectively.

Understanding Different Types of Essays

• Narrative Essays: These essays tell a story, usually from the writer’s perspective. The key is to engage the reader with a compelling narrative. Title Suggestion: “A Journey Unveiled: [Your Story Topic]”
• Descriptive Essays: These focus on painting a picture with words, describing a person, place, thing, or event in vivid detail. Title Suggestion: “The Colors of [Your Description Topic]”
• Expository Essays: These essays aim to inform or explain a topic clearly and logically. They are fact-based and devoid of personal feelings. Title Suggestion: “Unraveling the Facts: [Your Subject]”
• Persuasive Essays: The goal here is to convince the reader to accept the writer’s point of view or recommendation. Title Suggestion: “The Case for [Your Argument]”
• Argumentative Essays: Similar to persuasive essays but with a more balanced view, presenting both sides of an argument. Title Suggestion: “Navigating the Debate: [Your Topic]”
• Compare and Contrast Essays: These essays examine the similarities and differences between two subjects. Title Suggestion: “Contrasting Worlds: [Subject 1] vs. [Subject 2]”

Essay Writing Tips

• Start with Research: Before you begin writing, thoroughly research your topic. Gather all the necessary information and data to ensure your essay is well-informed and factually accurate.
• Create an Outline: An outline helps organize your thoughts and structure your essay logically. It serves as a roadmap, guiding you through the writing process.
• Craft a Strong Thesis Statement: Your thesis statement should clearly state your essay’s main idea or argument. It sets the direction and tone of your essay.
• Engaging Introduction: Your introduction should capture the reader’s attention and provide a preview of what the essay will cover.
• Body Paragraphs with Clear Arguments: Each paragraph should focus on a single idea or argument, supporting your thesis statement. Use evidence, examples, and explanations to substantiate your points.
• Use Transition Words: Transition words help the flow of your essay, guiding readers smoothly from one idea to the next.
• Conclude Effectively: Your conclusion should summarize the main points and restate the thesis in light of the evidence presented. It’s your final opportunity to leave a lasting impression.
• Revise and Edit: Review your essay for any grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors. Ensure that your essay flows logically and that your arguments are well-presented.
• Avoid Plagiarism: Always credit your sources properly. Use citations and references to acknowledge the work of others.
• Seek Feedback: If possible, have someone else read your essay and provide feedback. Fresh eyes can catch errors and provide a new perspective.

Structuring Your Essay

• Introduction: Set the stage for your essay. Begin with a hook, provide background information, and end with your thesis statement.
• Body Paragraphs: Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that relates to your thesis. Follow this with supporting sentences and concrete evidence.

How to Brainstorm Essay Titles

Brainstorming an essay title is a crucial step in the essay writing process. A title acts as the gateway to your content, setting the tone and expectation for the reader. Here are techniques and insights into how creativity, research, and the strategic use of keywords can lead to the creation of compelling essay titles.

Techniques for Brainstorming Essay Titles

• Mind Mapping: Start by jotting down words or phrases related to your essay topic. This can include main themes, arguments, or any words that resonate with your subject. Mind maps help in visually organizing your thoughts and finding connections between ideas.
• Use Writing Prompts: Writing prompts can stimulate creative thinking. For instance, if your essay is about climate change, prompts like “What if we fail to act?” or “The future of renewable energy” can lead to intriguing title ideas.
• Play with Words: Experiment with alliterations, metaphors, and puns to make your title catchy and memorable. For example, a title like “Solar Saviors: Harnessing the Sun’s Power” uses alliteration effectively.
• Ask Questions: Titles framed as questions can be very effective in engaging readers. They provoke thought and curiosity. For instance, “Is Artificial Intelligence the End of Human Creativity?” immediately piques interest.

The Role of Creativity and Research

• Creativity in Titling: Creativity in titles involves thinking outside the box and experimenting with language. It’s about crafting a title that not only summarizes your essay but also captures the reader’s imagination.
• Research for Relevance: Research ensures that your title is relevant and accurate. Look at existing literature on your topic, especially the titles of academic papers, books, and articles. Notice patterns, commonly used terms, and how titles are structured in your field.

Integrating Keywords Effectively in Titles

• SEO-Friendly Titles: In the digital age, where many essays are accessed online, using keywords effectively in your title can boost the visibility of your work. Identify keywords that are most relevant to your topic and integrate them into your title in a way that feels natural.
• Balancing Keywords with Creativity: While keywords help in SEO, it’s important not to sacrifice creativity. Your title should be a blend of SEO-friendly terms and creative expression. For example, “Green Revolution: The Future of Sustainable Energy” combines keywords with a creative element.
• Keyword Positioning: Place important keywords toward the beginning of your title if possible. Titles are often truncated in search engine results, so placing keywords at the start ensures they are visible.

Example Scenarios

• For an Argumentative Essay on Social Media: Start with keywords like ‘social media,’ ‘impact,’ ‘society.’ Brainstorm around these words to come up with titles like “Social Media: Society’s New Catalyst or Culprit?”
• For a Descriptive Essay on a Personal Experience: Creativity takes the front seat. If your essay is about overcoming a challenge, a title like “Beyond the Abyss: My Journey of Resilience” can be compelling.
• For an Expository Essay on Technology: Incorporate both technical terms and a layman-friendly approach. A title such as “The Digital Dawn: Explaining Blockchain Technology” strikes a balance between being informative and accessible.

FAQs about Essay Writing and Title Generation

Essay writing and title generation are essential skills for students, academics, and writers. Here, we address some common questions, incorporating NLP-friendly keywords to assist in understanding and improving these skills.

1. How Do I Choose the Right Topic for My Essay? Answer: Choosing the right topic involves considering your interests, the essay’s purpose, and the audience. Start by brainstorming ideas related to your interests or course material. For academic essays, ensure the topic is researchable and relevant to your field. For personal essays, choose a topic that resonates with your experiences or viewpoints.

2. What Makes a Good Essay Title? Answer: A good essay title is catchy, concise, and reflective of the essay’s content. It should capture the essence of your essay and engage the reader’s curiosity. Using relevant keywords can also make your title more searchable and accessible, especially for online content.

3. How Can I Improve My Essay Writing Skills? Answer: Improving essay writing skills involves regular practice, reading extensively, and seeking feedback. Focus on structuring your essays clearly, developing a strong thesis, and supporting your arguments with evidence. Also, pay attention to grammar, style, and clarity. Writing workshops and online resources can be beneficial for skill enhancement.

4. Can You Explain the Structure of a Typical Essay? Answer: A typical essay structure includes an introduction with a thesis statement, body paragraphs with supporting arguments and evidence, and a conclusion that summarizes the main points and restates the thesis. Each body paragraph should start with a topic sentence and provide clear and coherent arguments.

5. How Important Are Keywords in an Essay Title? Answer: Keywords in an essay title are crucial, especially for digital content. They help in search engine optimization (SEO), making your essay more discoverable online. Include keywords that are central to your essay’s topic and align with what your potential readers might search for.

6. What Is the Best Way to Start an Essay? Answer: The best way to start an essay is with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention. This could be a provocative question, a surprising fact, a quotation, or a brief anecdote relevant to your topic. An engaging start sets the tone for your essay and encourages readers to continue.

7. How Can NLP Tools Help in Title Generation? Answer: NLP (Natural Language Processing) tools can assist in title generation by analyzing patterns in language and suggesting titles based on the content and context of your essay. They use algorithms to generate creative, relevant, and unique titles that can enhance the appeal of your essay.

8. What Are Common Mistakes to Avoid in Essay Writing? Answer: Common mistakes include unclear thesis statements, lack of structure, poor grammar, and insufficient evidence to support arguments. Avoid plagiarism by properly citing sources. Ensure that your essay addresses the prompt and stays on topic throughout.

9. How Do I Conclude My Essay Effectively? Answer: Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points and restating the thesis in the context of the information provided. Avoid introducing new arguments in the conclusion. Instead, leave the reader with a final thought or call to action that reflects the essay’s key message.

10. How Can I Make My Essay More Engaging? Answer: Make your essay more engaging by writing in a clear, concise, and lively style. Use examples, anecdotes, and rhetorical questions to connect with the reader. Vary your sentence structure and use active voice. Ensure that your essay flows logically and maintains the reader’s interest throughout.

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Create captivating essay titles with ai.

• Academic essays: Generate an engaging title for your research paper, thesis, or dissertation.
• Opinion pieces: Create a captivating title for your opinion essay or editorial.
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• Argumentative essays: Craft a persuasive title for your argumentative or persuasive essay.
• Descriptive essays: Develop a descriptive title for your essay that captures the essence of your topic.

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Essay Title: Rules, Tips, Mistakes to Avoid

Table of contents

• 1 What Makes a Good Title?
• 2.1 Use your essay to develop your topic
• 2.2 Identify keywords and take advantage of them
• 2.3 Use Multiple Titles
• 3.1 MLA Format
• 3.2 APA Format
• 3.3 Chicago Format
• 4 What to Avoid When Writing a Title for an Essay?
• 5 Take into account Your Paper Style
• 6 Types Of Papers and the Best Titles For Them
• 7.1 Questions make Catchy
• 7.2 Describe the Paper in 5 Words
• 7.3 Use One Direct Word
• 7.4 Extract a Sentence from the Paper
• 7.5 Take advantage of Pop-Culture
• 7.6 Put “On” at the beginning
• 7.7 Start with a Verb in “-ing”
• 7.8 Give a Mental Visualization of Your Topic
• 7.9 Modify a Title that was Rejected
• 7.10 Choose 2 Variants That Were Considered and Declined; Then Join Them Together
• 8.1 Why is an essay title important?
• 8.2 Can a title be a question?
• 8.3 How long should the title be?

Good paper titles could be the difference between the audience viewing or ignoring your essays. When chosen carefully, essay titles could well capture the attention of someone who would not typically read the topic. Learning the proper method for titling an article can work wonders in creating an attention-grabbing heading. A well-titled article will also tell readers what to expect. Knowing how to create a topic for an essay that commands the reader’s attention is important. That is why this piece is designed to help you write just that.

What Makes a Good Title?

The importance of a great title cannot be overemphasized in the essay-writing process . And that is where you question yourself – what makes good essay headlines?

• A good title for an essay must be memorable. You want to think up something that stands out as much as possible to capture the audience’s eyes and minds. Remember – your title is the first thing your reader sees.
• Your essay name must possess a near-perfect degree of accuracy. Titling an essay like a clickbait heading could have the viewer on strings at the beginning, but they may not be disposed towards reading it to the end. Even so, it might not leave them with the desired impression.
• A good essay title has to be written in a language the target audience would understand easily. You might want to keep the language of your essay headline simple, but it should reflect as much expertise as the target audience would reasonably expect.
• A proper heading for an essay must be easy to read. The main idea is that your title gives a brief insight into what the audience should expect. Keep it concise and eye-catching, and ensure it is in active voice.

How to Title an Essay?

Having understood the importance of creative essay titles, you also know what features they are supposed to contain. The next item on the agenda is for you to know how to make a title for a write-up. This is not an arbitrary undertaking. It is a multi-step ritual that helps you ensure you are on the right track to connect with your audience using a catchy essay title.

Use your essay to develop your topic

This may seem rather confusing, but it is a very efficient step to follow while coming up with great naming ideas. You should start writing your essay once you have a subject matter identified. By the time you finish writing your essay, you can use the write-up details to construct the most suitable title. It would also give you much more clarity on the subject matter and what the audience wants from it since you would have conducted more research on the issue. As such, your title can be more precise and connected to the paper.

Identify keywords and take advantage of them

Your essay’s title must scream “This is what you want” to the reader. And no matter how fun and memorable it may be, it might not be as successful if it does not capture what the audience is exactly looking for. This is where keywords will work for you. They are terms that would let readers know that your essay is relevant to what is in question.

For instance, imagine trying to research articles on symptoms of pregnancy – but the name you see has nothing like “symptoms” or “pregnancy” in them. They might be catchy essay headers and even end up being related to the search, but they don’t exactly strike you like that is what you seek. You don’t need to stuff your title with key phrases. Just two or three core ones will do the trick.

Use Multiple Titles

Nobody said you have to use just one main topic. Segmenting your paper and sub-titling each makes your essay much more readable.

Essay Title Formats and Punctuations

It is perfectly fine if you would rather freestyle your essay heading. After all, a little creative license never hurts as long as you craft a good essay title. Though, you might want to play it safer by defining parameters, especially if your essay is formal. In that case, you should opt for an essay title format. These are internationally recognized sets of prescribed guidelines for titling your papers. There are three main essay title styles – the MLA, the APA, and the Chicago.

The rules of MLA style  emphasize that your essay topics should be centralized on the page. Perhaps the most important rule of this style is that the title must be written in “title case”. This means every word should begin using capital letters except prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, “to” when it is alongside a verb in its infinitive form, and articles. However, the first and last words must have capital letters, no matter what they are. This style also discourages italicizing, underlining, or placing the topics in quotation marks.

This formatting APA style is particular about the brevity of the title, stipulating a maximum of 12 words. It emphasizes a short and straight-to-the-point without abbreviations or redundancies. A title in this style aims to share as much information with the audience in as few words as possible. It does not encourage the use of figurative words because it is used in technical and professional writing. Thus, expect to see it deployed toward a research paper title and formal articles. It also supports centralizing the title toward the top of the page.

Chicago Format

Like the other two formats, this style is particular about having the title in the title case. However, it gives more leeway and license to the writer than the others. In fact, the Chicago style prescribes no further guidelines beyond title casing.

What to Avoid When Writing a Title for an Essay?

Developing interesting titles for essays can be a challenge for some. Tips include avoiding negativity and offensive or controversial terms and keeping it professional. Even the cover page could be done properly thanks to a writing service like the APA title page generator, which can also help you write a good title for an essay.

Making a good start means staying positive. Even when the essay topics are dreary, attempt to write less negatively. Good headlines for essays also use appropriate language to attract more possible readers to the paper. Lastly, its image should remain neutral – don’t overshare.

Take into account Your Paper Style

The style of your essay is essential to your topic. Identify and study what kind of essay it is, e.g., an argumentative essay or narrative essay, and ensure that the essay topic reflects it. Essays have tones depending on their kind, the audience, and the subject matter. For instance, academic writing would likely assume a formal tone. Having identified the tone of your essays, you should ensure your essay topics don’t go off-key. It should complement the tone of the essay itself in order to have the desired effect on the readers.

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Types Of Papers and the Best Titles For Them

There are several situations that could involve you writing an essay paper. And depending on the situation or the target of the piece, several kinds of papers exist as well. These may include a narrative paper, expository essay, business paper, and thesis statement in academic writing, among others. Some of the most creative examples of titles include:

Research Paper

The Role of COVID-19 in the Growth of Digital Services

Impacts of Climate Change on Developed Countries

Business Paper

Why Franchising Is the Way for New Small Business Owners

How Digital Services Can Influence the Global Supply Chain

College Essay

The Golden Rule of Wholesome Studentship

Finding Success in My Failures

Reflective Essay

The Time I Met My Mentor

My First Surgery

Personal Statement

My Nine Lives as an Immigrant Student

The Three Horsemen of Ambition

Literary Analysis

The Use of Symbolism in The Pulley

Thematic Preoccupations of Shakespeare’s Othello

Report Titles

Earlier Vaccinations Would Not Have Subsided the Coronavirus Pandemic

Students Want Mixed Dormitories in American Universities

Good Titles for Essays about Yourself

Why I Am the Way I Am

A Letter To the 7-Year-Old Me

Good Titles for Narrative Writing

The Day the World Stood Still

My Perfect Birthday Party

MLA Essay Title Format

The Old Man and the Sea: A Critical Analysis of Ernest Hemingway

Why You Can Do What You Do Without Knowing Who You Are

Argumentative Essay

Are Electric Cars the Solution To Carbon Emissions?

Should Reparations Be Paid To Marginalized Groups?

Compare and Contrast Essay

Left Wing Versus Right Wing: What Ideologies Do We Need?

Good Versus Bad: The Constant Clashes of Morality

Persuasive Essay

Why Dogs Make Better Pets Compared to Cats

Digital Banking: The Peak of Fintech

Scholarship Essay Titles Examples

What Can You Contribute to the Student Community?

Narrate a Defining Experience in Your Life

Nursing Essay

COVID-19 and the Growing Demand for Nursing Staff

Prioritizing Ethical Education in the Nursing Profession

Title The Government’s Role in Poverty Alleviation

Myths and Facts about Tuberculosis

10 Tips to Create an Exceptional Title

There are numerous ways in which a writer can craft a quality naming experience. Unless you use a title generator for an essay , titling an essay is as simple or as hard as the writer makes it. It is often necessary to edit the essay online multiple times. Finding their own style is dependent on the type of essay and the purpose of the writing. In the quest to title an essay, here are some tips for arriving at a really creative title.

Questions make Catchy

Titles Interesting headings for essays can be created by using a cause-and-effect approach. Start considering a common problem and think about what question does that paper answers. You can compose a title out of it.

Describe the Paper in 5 Words

If you were, to sum up the entire paper in 5 words, what words would be chosen? Not only does this unique creation bring some fun to the process, but it can also birth a catchy phrase – which translates to a highly effective title.

Use One Direct Word

Sometimes the best essay title ideas are simpler than we think. For some essay topics, one idiom could be all you need. Though it might not be easy how to come up with one, it may give your research paper an edge over others.

Extract a Sentence from the Paper

It’s usually a good solution to pick the heading after the text is drafted. At this point, there are many title options. Just pick one that sums up your concepts better than the others.

Take advantage of Pop-Culture

Don’t be shy to use something related to pop culture. Titles for papers may definitely contain references to songs, books, or movies as long as they fit the paper topic. This could be especially powerful for college essay titles and other essays for younger readers. You just need to ensure that the audience can recognize it easily.

Put “On” at the beginning

Depending on what you’re writing, this option might be a bit tricky. It works very well for books, songs, or movie reviews. Just name the object of your research paper or article. For example, “On The Importance of Being Earnest.”

Start with a Verb in “-ing”

Especially persuasive essay types can greatly benefit from titles for papers starting like this. Be sure to find a verb straightforward enough to grab the attention.

Give a Mental Visualization of Your Topic

This works wonders when the topic you write about is art-oriented. Even if the mental image brings something that is not seen by most people, it could go far for those that grab it.

Modify a Title that was Rejected

Using old, rejected essay topics to design new ones is usually possible. All it takes is a bit of creativity and a decent name.

Choose 2 Variants That Were Considered and Declined; Then Join Them Together

Although 2 separate entities did not work out, it does not mean that those phrases can’t work together for your new paper. So keep that list of paper titles!

Why is an essay title important?

Can a title be a question, how long should the title be, readers also enjoyed.

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Essay Title Generator

Want To Know How It Works?

1 Insert specific keywords related to your topic into the box of the title generator tool.

2 Check the title generated.

3 Pick the catchiest variant and tell our writers which one you want them to use for your essay!

Why Should You Try an Essay Title Generator?

Free of charge.

Use the title maker for unlimited checks anytime you want. You don’t have to register to access a 24/7 customer support service as well.

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The Title generator works real quick for any type of essay. You don’t have to insert your email as well.

Essay Title Generator - a Tool You’d Like to Have!

Did it happen to you that you already have a text, know the exact topic, and still can’t come up with the title? An accurate one helps to interest the readers and reveals the main idea of the entire text. This is one of the elements of your essay that help grasp the attention of your professor from the very first seconds he or she takes a look at your work. Thanks to an Essay Title Generator tool, things got easier. Learn more about what this tool is, how it works, and why you need it.

What is a Title Generator For Essays And Why Do You Need It

As much as the name says - it helps to produce a catchy title that will work for your paper. When you work hard on some text, you want the header to be precise and not general. Nevertheless, after a hard day, it may be difficult to pick one creative title even if you are a Harvard graduate.

This tool does all the dirty work for you and offers the proper name for your paper. In other words, it is one more tool that can simplify your life significantly. Our title maker is free of charge, meaning you can use it anytime you want. Besides, the number of checks is unlimited. The best thing is that the tool is easy to use so that you don’t have to puzzle over it.

How It Works

After you finish your work, you have an idea which words are the central ones in your paper. These recur throughout your work and uncover the main idea of the text. Paper Title Generator is like a vending machine. Your only task is to insert several keywords that best describe the topic of your writing into the box of the tool. Voila! Your original and clever title is ready!

What Benefits You Can Get

This is a convenient tool for sure, but is it the only benefit? If you visit our website, you will see some examples of creative titles for essays. What is more, we offer a unique opportunity to read the structure samples of the essays with these titles. In such a way, you can make sure that our tool is, indeed, worthy.

Our generating tool for essay titles is a must-have for those who ran out of good ideas and need an ideal header. The Title Generator is not only convenient but also extremely simple in use. You can take a deserved rest after a long day and receive an accurate header for your work. There are enough of the reasons to start using the generating tool, but the most important thing is the quality we offer.

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Free Essay Title Generator

How to use our topic generator:.

• Put keywords describing your essay topic in the first section
• Select the needed subject category in the second section from the available list
• Receive title ideas for your paper and let our writers know which one they should use for your essay

Use Free Essay Title Generator to Give Your Paper the Best Name

The online essay title generator is a unique tool that can play a vital role in writing academic assignments. It comes in handy when students get instructions for completing an essay but have no idea how to name it. It’s not enough to know your material well and be an excellent researcher: an essay title makes your work stand out from others, giving it a unique style and a special tone. Missing these skills will make your essay look dull and boring. Turning to an essay writing service will fix that, just ask " write my paper ".

A free and easy-to-use paper title generator is the best solution for students who are trying to create a perfect name for their essays. This tool analyzes keywords, ties them together, and produces a new unique title that will fit their paper. With its help, students won’t spend days brainstorming just for thinking of one single line of text — the generator will do it for them within a few seconds.

2 Ways in Which Essay Title Generator Could Help You

Let’s have a closer look at the instances where our title generator can help students who work on various academic tasks. Firstly, it gives options that could be used for a specific paper. In case you decide to try your luck with an essay topic generator for a high school essay on the topic “American movie industry,” you may get a title like “Dystopian Portrayal of the World in Hunger Games” or something similar. Then you can copy it and put it into your text without changing anything — whatever option you got, it’s yours. No need to credit the tool or worry about infringing upon someone’s rights.

The second way concerns the fact that a free paper title generator gives students endless opportunities to use it. If you don’t like the first name you got from it, try repeating this process. Change the keywords a bit, put in different combinations, and keep doing it until it offers a wide range of options. After that, students could combine some of them or edit the ones they’ve got. Use them as inspiration for coming up with the best possible title.

How Does Our Essay Idea Generator Work?

All such tools have a similar working process. Some of them require payment for their usage, and others are free, but you have to watch some ads before accessing them. Some have many stages, others are fairly simple. Ours falls into the latter category.

There are just 3 major steps students should follow to get a unique title for their essay using our free paper title generator. After accessing our topic generator, you will see two empty sections.

Put keywords about your essay topic in the first section

Select the needed subject category in the second section. There will be an available list with options there.   

Click the green “search” button and receive title ideas for your paper.

Our essay title generator could also function as a headline generator tool. Whether you’re writing an article or a school paper, you’ll get suggestions based on the info you provided. Read through the list and choose the best one.

If you are satisfied with a title but aren’t thrilled with the idea of writing a paper on it, consider using the help of our professional writers. You’ll see this suggestion right across each name our generator offers.

Types of Papers Students Could Find Help With

Are you wondering what kinds of essays our tool works with? It’s a good question. No one wants to waste their time on something that wouldn’t be effective. Luckily, we strive to assist students with absolutely all types of academic writing assignments, so we incorporated this principle into our catchy title generator. You could use it for the following essay types:

High school, college, & university level papers

Research essay

Dissertation & Thesis papers

Any other academic works

Now, what about subjects? They differ based on majors or even the types of universities students attend. But if you’re hoping to find truly creative titles for essays in no time at all, you’re in luck since no matter what subject you’re studying, our tool is going to take care of it! Here are some common areas students request most often. The list isn’t limited to them alone, so keep this in mind.

Education essay titles

Healthcare & Medicine

IT & Technology

Communications

Reasons Why You Should Choose Our Generator

There are lots of different tools that could generate titles for academic papers. Each has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. But we invested many efforts into making sure that our essay topic generator is the best. Here’s why:

It’s completely free. Every student can use this tool entirely for free. There is no need to create an account, pay something, waste precious minutes watching annoying ads, or share any kind of personal information. Visit our website, type in the keywords, select a subject, and use the generator as many times as you need.  

It’s quick. Our essay title maker works with amazing speed. You can test it yourself: after you click “search,” in a few seconds it’ll show all the options it came up with. This will save your time and give you a boost before you know it!  

It’s diverse. This tool generates ideas on a basis of many topics selected from various areas. It works magic with students’ keywords, so you won’t see just one option. There could be quite a lot of them, which widens your search and increases the chances of you finding what you want right away.  

It has an extra offer of help. Apart from sharing inspiring ideas for essay titles, this generator also picks ideal options of writers who could craft a paper on these specific topics for you. Of course, this feature isn’t obligatory. If you are interested in working on an assignment by yourself, you can just ignore it. But if you wouldn’t mind assistance, give it a try.

Use Our Title Generator & Get Professional Academic Assistance

Our tool could generate different ideas for you in a matter of seconds. Whenever you feel stuck and uninspired, use it and find the most fitting name for your paper. But if you cringe at the thought of having to pour hours into writing an essay, no matter how interesting the topic is, consider contacting our writers and asking them for personalized help.

The only thing you should do is choose a topic and tell our team what points to cover. Give them the number of pages and sources, set an end date, and confirm everything. That’s it! We’ll have your assignment ready strictly by the deadline you’ve indicated, so you can relax and stop worrying about work.

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Free Essay Title Generator to Nail Your Assignment

Modern students are overwhelmed with tons of assignments. It’s a usual occasion to need to write several essays every week, so learners need to waste no extra minutes on complex, redundant tasks. One such task is topic selection. It’s an essential preparatory stage for any assignment, but it often takes too much time and needs to be clarified for the learner. We have taken this challenge out of your homework completion process by developing a smart, free tool to generate essay titles in a few seconds. Try it out and see for yourself; with our essay title generator, you can sit down to write without hours of pointless searching for interesting topics.

Importance of a Stellar Title

It’s vital not to underscore the title’s importance. In most cases, readers don’t proceed to the text if they don’t like the title or feel confused with it. Therefore, an interesting and informative title must be used by every writer. By scanning your title, the audience should quickly capture the content of your text. Ideally, the readers should also get hooked with some catchy phrase or a promise of an interesting reading experience.

What Is an Essay Title Generator?

Our essay title generator is a smart, automated tool that simplifies the topic selection process. It covers all subjects, themes, and academic areas, thus ensuring complete coverage of all your educational needs. No more sitting in front of your laptop, scanning the news and scholarly databases in search of ideas. Just insert a couple of keywords that your prompt contains and watch your topic formulate in seconds.

Here’s what you need to do to make use of our title generator tool:

• Enter the keywords that characterize your topic in the best way into the corresponding tab.
• Select the category of your assignment. We offer a broad range of selection options, from admission essays to public speeches, but this tab is optional. You may skip it to see how the keywords alone work, refining the search later.
• Click the “Show Titles” tab to see the results.

That’s all required from you, and the tool starts scanning the GradeMiners database of scholarly materials and writer samples to spot the hottest and most relevant topics for you. This way, you receive a great title in seconds, and now it’s up to you whether to take it in the works in the “as is” form or press “Show Titles” again to see other suggestions.

Why Use Our Title Generator?

Technology comes with many advancements meant to simplify students’ lives and speed up their routine tasks. The same goes for the free essay title generator that our coders have programmed to speed up your topic selection phase and make it more suitable for your academic goals. Here are the key benefits the users of our system enjoy.

Simple interface

There’s nothing complicated or confusing about the use of our essay title generator. You only need to enter the keywords you have received from a professor (e.g., causes of diabetes, the death penalty in the USA, COVID-19 and economy, etc.) and press “Show Titles.” You can also customize the search to a specific paper type, such as a persuasive essay or a speech. If you do so, the system will scan the database of orders of this type only, leaving the rest of the materials on this topic aside. So, you’re likely to arrive at a relevant, attention-grabbing, and informative title in a minute.

Free, quick help

The best about this tool is that it comes free of charge. Thus, it becomes a secret weapon of students on a budget who cannot afford premium-level writing assistance or can’t leave the topic selection to the writer. Using our title generator frees more time for writing and editing and makes the topic selection a manageable step instead of a major writing bottleneck.

Huge database

Our free title generator is much more than a Google search engine. It’s a smart system specially meant for topic formulation based on your entered keywords and the academic work type you need to compose. So, you can receive interesting and researchable essay titles without extra search filters or long scanning of Web pages.

Tips for Proper Use of Our Title Generator

As with any other technology, our essay title generator works according to a set of predetermined criteria to help students receive workable essay topics. Therefore, if you understand its operation principles, you’re sure to maximize the value of this free tool in your academics. Here are the tips we give to all interested users.

Choose the category wisely

The title generator system currently offers 30+ work types that a student can choose from. So, if you find your academic assignment type in the drop-down menu, make sure to click on it and narrow the focus of the algorithm’s search. For instance, if you want to compose a persuasive essay, the algorithm will look for persuasive topics instead of offering narrative or expository essay titles that will only meet your needs.

Edit the topic further

You don’t need to take the suggested topic as it is; a much better option is to perceive the suggestion as the first stepping stone in the title’s generation. Don’t forget that the algorithm scans the publicly available sources for information, so you may face plagiarism issues if you simply copy and paste the offered title to your paper.

Re-run the search if necessary

Don’t stop on the variants you receive in the first or second round of the title generator’s use. The system works in a way that minimizes your cognitive workload, so the algorithm offers only up to 30 titles in one go, while there could be many other options to consider. So, you can re-run the title generation process as often as you need, arriving at the final title variant that you’ll eventually like.

What title limit does the essay title generator develop at once?

It depends on your request. If you are not content with the results of your first search, continue generating until you find the best match.

How many subject categories does the system cover?

Our title generator can cover all common subjects. So be sure you’ll enjoy the platform opportunities fully and achieve great accomplishments in your field.

Can I generate an essay with my essay title?

Of course! You can generate any paperwork with a central idea , as our service allows you to craft impeccable content from scratch.

How does the tool provide original papers by using internet links?

Due to the system’s capacity to research the relevant websites and make proper adjustments, students acquire error-free papers with 100% originality. As you can see, our title maker for essays is a solid option for uniqueness verification.

How to Title an Essay: Guide with Creative Examples [2024]

It’s not a secret that the reader notices an essay title first. No catchy hook or colorful examples attract more attention from a quick glance. Composing a creative title for your essay is essential if you strive to succeed, as it:

• causes the first impression;
• reflects the tone, topic, and the purpose of the writing;
• indicates the author’s credibility.

Thus, how you name your paper is of the same importance as the paper itself.

Good titles for essays should be concise and eye-catching. Nobody likes long and cumbersome headings that do not reflect the point of the paper. While tilting your work, pay enough attention to the word choice. How do you come up with a good title? Use your common sense and imagination. For more details, our experts prepared the sections below.

• 💭 What Are Good Titles?

✔️ Finish Your Essay

🤲 sum it up, 🏷️ define the keywords, 🖊️ follow the format, ⚖️ change words, ✨ 23 creative title examples, 💭 what are good titles for essays.

A title is a critical part of any academic paper, so you must understand what to include and how to choose it. Here are some features that your heading has to show.

👩‍🏫 How to Title an Essay?

Are you struggling with formulating a heading? Yes, this task is quite challenging. But let’s figure out the basic rules.

The title of any paper should reveal:

• What the paper is about. Cover the general idea of your work in the title.
• Why the reader might be interested in it. Prove the relevance of your paper to the audience.
• The context of the issue. A good title previews the full picture of the topic regarding its “when” and “where.”

To nail your essay heading, follow the guide below. Check our title examples if you are not sure about your abilities. You can also try and use a creative title page generator for a faster result.

Before writing a title to your essay, you should finish your paper. This way, you’ll be able to reread and get the whole idea to incorporate it into your title.

Moreover, you’ll see how long a title should be for an essay after finishing the entire piece. But remember: not too lengthy and not too wordy.

The essay title depends on the type of essay:

• Narrative essay . For this kind of essay, the title should not provide any detailed info or reflect your position. It should only present the general idea of your piece of writing. For example, the narrative essay topic may look like this: My Thorny Pass to Success.
• Argumentative essay . The title for an argumentative essay should clearly state the point you are going to support. For instance, you can choose the following heading: Social Media Has a Negative Effect on Teenagers.
• Cause and effect essay . For this kind of essay writing, the title should be clear and provide a background of the issue. The reader should immediately understand what the problem is, what its cause is, what an effect is. Usually, writers use the words “due to” or “because” to highlight the cause-effect correlation. Look at the example: Because Coronavirus Attacks, People Start to Explore New Ways of Remote Working.
• Persuasive essay . A persuasive essay should have a dynamic title that immediately calls to action. Moreover, the topic has to be relevant to the audience. For example, for students, the following title would be compelling: Sleep 7-8 Hours a Day: the Lack of Sleep Affects Academic Performance.

The most straightforward way of creating an essay title is summarizing. Sum up the whole paper in one sentence, focus on the central idea, cut the details, and use it as the title.

For this purpose, you can take your thesis statement and restate it, adding creativity. Or use the best summary generator you can find to simplify the task. But don’t forget to make sure that it sounds catchy and explains why the potential reader should check your essay.

For example:

Let’s imagine, you are writing about Artificial Intelligence, and your thesis statement sounds like this:

The purpose of this paper is to explore the advantages of Artificial intelligence’s influence on society and to discover possible outcomes.

Then, the title may be the following:

Artificial Intelligence – the Next Step into the Bright Future.

Every essay includes the key concepts that you explored and the terms that you used for this. You should find essential words and phrases and incorporate them into the essay titles. The keywords will focus the reader’s attention on the central topic of your paper.

You are writing about the negative impact of deforestation on the environment. These are your keywords, as they are the most vital ones. Thus, the title would sound like this:

Protecting the Environment: Deforestation Should be Stopped.

Every educational institution requires to format the academic papers for a particular writing style. Among a wide diversity of citation styles , the most popular ones are APA and MLA formats.

There are a lot of specific requirements regarding the essay title formats. So, let’s investigate these styles.

The APA style requires a title page at the beginning of your research paper. Here, where the readers first meet the heading. The title page should include the following:

• The paper’s title. Centered, bold, capitalized, 3-4 lines below the top margin.
• The author’s name (first name, middle initial, last name). Centered, not bold, two lines below the title.
• The author’s affiliations. Centered, not bold, immediately after the name.
• Number and name of the course.
• The instructor’s name and title.
• Page number in the top right corner.

See the example of an APA title page below:

The MLA style does not require a separate title page. Still, some formatting rules are to be strictly followed.

• The MLA paper should start one inch from the top of the document, flush left.
• Write the author’s name, then the instructor’s name, the course number, and the date. Each item should be on a separate double-spaced line.
• Add the title of your paper. It should be centered and capitalized.
• Do not put quotation marks, underline, italicize, or boldface your MLA title. Just make it centered and capitalized.

Here is an example of an MLA title formatting.

Before choosing a title, figure out is the tone of your essay. Is it more formal or friendly? Do you write it for a college or a personal blog?

Change the wording to make your title sound more catchy and positive. Or serious and official. You can try something new and come up with a creative title for your essay.

You need to write an article about the benefits of healthy eating for university and your online blog. For an academic essay, your title would probably look like this:

A Well-Balanced Diet Is a Key to a Healthy Organism.

In contrast, for a blog article, it would be better to write something like this:

An Apple a Day Keeps a Doctor Away: How Healthy Eating Helps us Be Fit.

Do you see the magic? One topic, different wording, and completely diverse tones as a result. So, try until you reach the most appropriate version of the title for your piece of writing.

Are you still struggling with the selection of a heading for your paper? Take a look at our creative essay title examples! Inspire, then turn on your imagination, and create a personal title.

Argumentative Essay Titles.

• Intercultural Community at University: Prosperity or Constant Encounters.
• Leadership Nature: a Congenital or an Acquired Feature?
• Do Energetic Drinks Help or Harm the Organisms?
• Why Should Sex Education Be Taught at Schools?
• Should the Law Punish Bullying?
• Guns Legalization is an Unsafe Way of Self-Protection.

Narrative Essay Titles.

• Lady Macbeth – One of the Most Frightening Female Characters of Shakespeare.
• The Art of Overcoming Failures: How to Deal with the Downfalls Easily.
• Steve Jobs: from a Poor Student to a Multi-billionaire.
• The Most Influential Person in my Life.
• Three Biggest Events of my Life that Shaped me as a Person.
• What Does it Mean to be a Loving Kid for your Parents?
• What Does “Family” Mean to You?

Persuasive Essay Titles.

• Never Judge the Person by their Appearance.
• Music Should be Implemented as a Medical Treatment.
• In the Battle Between E-Books and Paper Books, the Last Ones Should Win.
• Remote Learning Cannot Replace Face-to-Face Classes.
• Technology Addiction is a Threat to the Future Generation.
• Murderers Should be Sentenced to Death Penalty.

Cause and Effect Essay Titles.

• Because of Traveling Around the World, People Expand their Horizons.
• Due to Massive Immigration, Countries Lose their Cultural Identity.
• Home Abuse as a Cause of Depression and Suicide as its Effect.
• Drug Addiction: a Cause for Psychological Disorder or an Effect?

Thank you for reading our article. Now you get how to come up with a good title for an essay. Don’t forget to share our page with your friends.

• Writing an Effective Title: Quick Tips, Student Support Writing Center, University of Minnesota
• Choosing a Title, Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Research Guides at University of Southern California
• How Do I Write a Great Title: U-M LSA Sweetland Center for Writing, College of Literature, Science, and Arts, University of Michigan
• General Format: Purdue Online Writing Lab, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University
• Formatting a Research Paper, Heading and Title: The MLA Style Center
• Title Page Setup: APA Style, American Psychological Association
• APA Title Page (Cover Page) Format, Example, Template: Saul McLeod, Simply Psychology
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“You Are My Friend” Early Androids and Artificial Speech

By Jessica Riskin

Centuries before audio deepfakes and text-to-speech software, inventors in the eighteenth century constructed androids with swelling lungs, flexible lips, and moving tongues to simulate human speech. Jessica Riskin explores the history of such talking heads, from their origins in musical automata to inventors’ quixotic attempts to make machines pronounce words, converse, and declare their love.

May 29, 2024

Design for parts of a speaking machine from a 1791 treatise by Wolfgang von Kempelen. The bellows act as lungs feeding air into the voice box, which is fitted with a vibrating reed whose sounds are shaped by opening and closing valves. Not pictured here is a rubber “mouth” attachment, which connects to “ o ” with a flange that bears holes resembling nostrils — Source .

The word “android”, derived from Greek roots meaning “manlike”, was the coinage of Gabriel Naudé, French physician and librarian, personal doctor to Louis XIII, and later architect of the forty-thousand-volume library of Cardinal Jules Mazarin. Naudé was a rationalist and an enemy of superstition. In 1625 he published a defense of Scholastic philosophers to whom tradition had ascribed works of magic. He included the thirteenth-century Dominican friar, theologian, and philosopher Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), who, according to legend, had built an artificial man made of bronze. 1

This story seems to have originated long after Albert’s death with Alfonso de Madrigal (also known as El Tostado), a voluminous commentator of the fifteenth century, who adapted and embellished the tales of moving statues and talking brazen heads in medieval lore. 2 El Tostado said that Albert had worked for thirty years to compose a whole man out of metal. The automaton supplied Albert with the answers to all of his most vexing questions and problems and even, in some versions of the tale, obligingly dictated a large part of Albert’s voluminous writings. The machine had met its fate, according to El Tostado, when Albert’s student, Thomas Aquinas, smashed it to bits in frustration, having grown tired of “its great babbling and chattering”. 3

Naudé did not believe in Albert’s talkative statue. He rejected it and other tales of talking automaton heads as “false, absurd and erroneous”. 4 The reason Naudé cited was the statues’ lack of equipment: being altogether without “muscles, lungs, epiglottis, and all that is necessary for a perfect articulation of the voice”, they simply did not have the necessary “parts and instruments” to speak reasonably. 5 Naudé concluded, in light of all the reports, that Albert the Great probably had built an automaton, but never one that could give him intelligible and articulate responses to questions. Instead, Albert’s machine must have been similar to the Egyptian statue of Memnon, much discussed by ancient authors, which murmured agreeably when the sun shone upon it: the heat caused the air inside the statue to “rarefy” so that it was forced out through little pipes, making a murmuring sound. 6

Despite disbelieving in Albert the Great’s talking head, Naudé gave it a powerful new name, referring to it as the “android”. 7 Thus deftly, he smuggled a new term into the language, for according to the 1695 dictionary by the French philosopher and writer Pierre Bayle, “android” had been “an absolutely unknown word, & purely an invention of Naudé, who used it boldly as though it were established.” 8 It was a propitious moment for neologisms: Naudé’s term quickly infiltrated the emerging genre of dictionaries and encyclopedias. Bayle repeated it in the article on “Albert le Grand” in his dictionary. 9 Thence, “android” secured its immortality as the headword of an article — citing Naudé and Bayle — in the first volume of the supplement to the English encyclopedist Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia . 10 In denying the existence of Albert’s android, Naudé had given life to the android as a category of machine.

“The Talking Head of Albertus Magnus”, plate from J. H. Pepper’s Cyclopædic Science Simplified (1885) — Source .

But the first actual android of the new, experimental-philosphical variety for which the historical record contains rich information — “android” in Naudé’s root sense, a working human-shaped assemblage of “necessary parts” and instruments — went on display on February 3, 1738. The venue was the opening of the annual Saint-Germain fair on Paris’ Left Bank. This android differed crucially from earlier musical automata, the figures on hydraulic organs and musical clocks, in that it really performed the complex task it appeared to perform, in this case, playing a flute, rather than merely making some suggestive motions. The device was, in this sense, a novelty, but it must have looked familiar to many of the fairgoers, being modeled on a well-known statue that stood in the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens and that is now at the Louvre Museum: Antoine Coysevox’s Shepherd Playing the Flute .

Like the statue, the android represented a faun, half man and half goat. The mechanical faun, like the marble one at the Tuileries, held a flute. The second faun, though, became suddenly animate and began to play its instrument, executing twelve tunes in succession. At first, skeptical spectators were persuaded this must be a music box, with an autonomous mechanism inside to produce the sound, while the external figure merely pretended to play. But no, the android actually did play a real flute, blowing air from its lungs (three sets of bellows), and exercising flexible lips, a supple tongue, and soft, padded fingers with a skin of leather. It was even reported that one could bring one’s own flute, and the machine would oblige by playing that one too. 11

The flute-playing android was the work of an ambitious young engineer named Jacques Vaucanson. The last of ten children of a Grenoble glove maker, Vaucanson had been born in the bitterly cold winter of 1709, at the waning of Louis XIV’s long reign, in the midst of a terrible famine and the bloodiest year of a war that France was losing. Emerging from this dark moment, Vaucanson’s life and the Enlightenment would take shape in tandem, and his work would become a point of reference for the world of letters.

As a child, he had liked to build clocks and repair watches. While a school boy, he had begun designing automata. After a brief stint as a novice in Lyon, ending when a church dignitary ordered Vaucanson’s workshop destroyed, he had come to Paris at the age of nineteen to seek his fortune. Thinking he might train as a doctor, he had attended some courses in anatomy and medicine, but had soon decided to apply these studies to a new area of research: re-creating living processes in machinery. The Flutist was the result of five years’ labor. 12 When it was finished, Vaucanson submitted a memoir explaining its mechanism to the Paris Academy of Sciences. This memoir contains the first known experimental and theoretical study of the acoustics of the flute. 13

“Vaucanson”, plate from Alfred des Essarts’ The Great Ancient and Modern Inventors (1864) — Source .

Following an eight-day debut at the Saint-Germain fair, Vaucanson moved his android to the Hôtel de Longueville, a gilded hall in a grand sixteenth-century mansion at the center of the city. There it attracted about seventy-five people a day, each paying a hefty entrance fee of three livres (roughly an average week’s wages for a Parisian worker). Among its audience were the members of the Paris Academy of Sciences, who traveled as a body to the Hôtel de Longueville to witness the android Flutist. 14 Greeting his public in groups of ten or fifteen, Vaucanson explained the Flutist’s mechanism and then set it to play its concert.

The reviews were effusive. “All of Paris is going to admire . . . the most singular and agreeable mechanical phenomenon perhaps ever seen”, wrote one reviewer, emphasizing that the android “really and physically plays the flute”. 15 The music-making statue, another agreed, was “the most marvelous piece of mechanics” that had ever been. 16 The abbé Pierre Desfontaines, a journalist and popular writer, advertising Vaucanson’s show to readers of his literary journal, described the insides of the Flutist as containing “an infinity of wires and steel chains . . . [which] form the movement of the fingers, in the same way as in living man, by the dilation and contraction of the muscles. It is doubtless the knowledge of the anatomy of man . . . that guided the author in his mechanics.” 17 In the article “Androïde” in the monumental Encylopédie , a universal compilation of knowledge edited by the philosopher and writer Denis Diderot and the mathematician and philosopher Jean d’Alembert, Vaucanson’s mechanical Flutist became the paradigm of an android. The article, written by d’Alembert, defines an android as a human figure performing human functions, and virtually the whole piece is devoted to the Flutist. 18

Soon after the Academy of Science members came to the Hôtel de Longueville, Vaucanson returned the visit to read a memoir on the design and function of his Flutist. 19 The android’s mechanism was moved by weights attached to two sets of gears. The bottom set turned an axle with cranks that powered three sets of bellows, leading into three windpipes, giving the Flutist’s lungs three different blowing pressures. The upper set of gears turned a cylinder with cams, triggering a frame of levers that controlled the Flutist’s fingers, windpipe, tongue, and lips. To design a machine that played a flute, Vaucanson had studied human flute players in minute detail. He had devised various ways of transmitting aspects of their playing into the design of his android. For example, to mark out measures he had had a flutist play a tune while another person beat time with a sharp stylus onto the rotating cylinder. 20

The following winter, Vaucanson added two more machines to the show. One was a second android musician, a life-size Provençal shepherd that played twenty minuets and other dance tunes on a pipe grasped in its left hand, while accompanying itself with its right on a drum slung over its shoulder. 21 The pipe had only three holes, which meant that the notes were produced almost entirely by the player’s variations of blowing pressure and tongue stops. Working to reproduce these subtleties in his automaton, Vaucanson found that human pipers employed a much greater range of blowing pressures than they themselves realized. The Piper also yielded another surprising discovery. Vaucanson had assumed that each note would be the product of a given finger position combined with a particular blowing pressure, but he discovered that the blowing pressure for a given note depended upon the preceding note, so that, for example, it required more pressure to produce a D after an E than after a C, obliging him to have twice as many blowing pressures as notes. 22 The higher overtones of the higher note resonate more strongly in the pipe than the lower overtones of the lower note; but pipers themselves were not aware of compensating for this effect, and the physics of overtones was explained only in the 1860s by Hermann von Helmholtz. 23

Detail from an illustration by Gravelot of Vaucanson’s automata: flutist, duck, and piper, ca. 1747–1773. While the bird could flap its wings and cavort duckishly, its main attraction was how it swallowed bits of grain and then excreted them in digested form — Source .

The android musicians did not just make music, a feat that music boxes had achieved for more than two centuries, but they did so using flexible lips, moving tongues, soft fingers, and swelling lungs. They were simulations of the human process of making music, and as the century wore on, the designers of such simulations turned toward the even more complex task of making machines that could mimic human speech.

In 1739, a year after Vaucanson’s duck made its public debut, a surgeon named Claude-Nicolas le Cat, published a description, now lost, of an “automaton man in which one sees executed the principal functions of the animal economy”, circulation, respiration, and “the secretions”. 24 It is not clear what became of this early project, but Le Cat returned to the idea in 1744 when, according to the proceedings of the Académie de Rouen, he read a sensational memoir there. A great crowd was assembled to hear it, and one witness reported, “Monsieur Le Cat told us of his plan for an artificial man . . . . His automaton will have respiration, circulation, quasi-digestion, secretion and chyle, heart, lungs, liver and bladder, and God forgive us, all that follows from it.” 25

Le Cat’s automaton man was to have “all the operations of a living man”, including not only “the circulation of the blood, the movement of the heart, the play of the lungs, the swallowing of food, its digestion, the evacuations, the filling of the blood vessels and their depletion by bleeding”, but also — apparently crossing the Cartesian boundary between mechanical body and rational soul — “even speech and the articulation of words”. 26

This idea, the possibility of simulating articulate speech, had generated a tradition of philosophical discussion over the preceding century. If some continued to find it a quixotic notion, it was in fact literally so: when Don Quixote himself encounters a talking bronze head (connected to a hidden human being), he is fully captivated by it, though his less suggestible squire, Sancho Panza, is unimpressed by its conversation. 27 Cervantes’s contemporary, the Spanish writer on magic, Martín del Río, also found it unreasonable to suppose “that an inanimate thing should produce the human voice and give answers to questions. For this requires life, and breath, and a perfect cooperation of the vital organs, and some discursive ability in the speaker.” 28

1662 print of an engraving by Martin Engelbrecht depicting Don Quixote inspecting the talking, enchanted head — Source .

Several decades later, some if not all the items on del Río’s list seemed possibly achievable in an artificial machine. Athanasius Kircher wrote in 1673, with regard to the legends of Albert the Great’s talking head and the ancient Egyptian speaking statues, that while certain skeptics believed these devices must have been “either non-existent or fraudulent or constructed with the help of the devil”, many others believed it was possible to build such a statue having throat, tongue and other organs of speech that would emit an articulated voice when it was activated by wind. Kircher included a sketch of a design for a talking figure. 29 His student, Gaspar Schott, also a prolific natural philosopher and engineer, adopted the same attitude, even alluding to a question-answering statue that Kircher was building for Queen Christina of Sweden. 30 No doubt the queen’s previous philosophy teacher, Descartes, had interested her in the relations between rational speech and a mechanical body.

Although the idea of simulated speech was not new, around the middle of the eighteenth century, experimental philosophers and mechanicians took a renewed interest in it. They assumed that speech was a bodily function akin to respiration or digestion — they did not explicitly distinguish the rational from the physiological aspects of speaking — and even the skeptics expressed their skepticism in connection with physiological details rather than principled objections. In his effusive review of Vaucanson’s Flutist in 1738, for example, the abbé Desfontaines predicted that articulate speech could never be produced in artificial machinery because the bodily process of speaking would remain impenetrably mysterious: one could never know precisely “what goes on in the larynx and glottis . . . [and] the action of the tongue, its folds, its movements, its varied and imperceptible rubbings, all the modifications of the jaw and the lips.” 31 Speaking was an essentially organic process, Desfontaines reckoned, and could only take place in a living throat.

Desfontaines was not alone in this belief: in this period, skeptics about the possibility of artificial speech generally argued that the human larynx, vocal tract, and mouth were too soft, supple, and malleable to be simulated mechanically. Around 1700, Denys Dodart, personal physician to Louis XIV, presented several memoirs to the Paris Academy of Sciences on the subject of the human voice, in which he argued that the voice and its modulations were caused by constrictions of the glottis, and that these were “inimitable by art”. 32 The writer and academician Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, who was then Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, commented that no wind instrument produced its sound by such a mechanism (the variation of a single opening) and that it seemed “altogether outside the realm of imitation . . . . Nature can use materials that are not at all at our disposal, and she knows how to use them in ways that we are not at all permitted to know.” 33

A last skeptic citing material difficulties was the philosopher and writer Antoine Court de Gébelin, who observed that “the trembling that spreads to all the parts of the glottis, the jigging of its muscles, their shock against the hyoid bone that raises and lowers itself, the repercussions that the air undergoes against the sides of the mouth . . . these phenomena” could only take place in living bodies. 34 On the other hand, there were plenty who disagreed. For example, the polemical materialist Julien Offray de La Mettrie took a look at Vaucanson’s Flutist and concluded that a speaking machine “could no longer be regarded as impossible”. 35

“Organs of the Voice”, plate from Antoine Court de Gébelin’s Primitive World (ca. 1773–1782) — Source .

During the last three decades of the century, several people took up the project of artificial speech. All of them assumed that the sounds of spoken language required a structure as similar as possible to the throat and mouth. This assumption, that a talking machine required simulated speaking organs, had not always dominated thinking about artificial speech. In 1648, John Wilkins, the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, had described plans for a speaking statue that would synthesize, rather than simulate, speech by making use of “inarticulate sounds”. He wrote, “We may note the trembling of water to be like the letter L, the quenching of hot things to the letter Z, the sound of strings, to the letter Ng [ sic ], the jirking of a switch to the letter Q, etc.” 36 But in the 1770s and 80s, builders of speaking machines mostly assumed that it would be impossible to create artificial speech without building a talking head: reproducing the speech organs and simulating the process of speaking.

The first to attempt such a machine was the English poet and naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) who in 1771 reported that he had “contrived a wooden mouth with lips of soft leather, and with a valve over the back part of it for nostrils.” Darwin’s talking head had a larynx made of “a silk ribbon . . . stretched between two bits of smooth wood a little hollowed.” It said “mama, papa, map and pam” in “a most plaintive tone”. 37

The next to simulate speech was a Frenchman, the abbé Mical, who presented a pair of talking heads to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1778. The heads contained “several artificial glottises of different forms [arranged] over taut membranes”. By means of these glottises, the heads performed a dialogue in praise of Louis XVI: “The King gives peace to Europe”, intoned the first head; “Peace crowns the King with Glory”, replied the second; “and Peace makes the Happiness of the People”, added the first; “O King Adorable Father of your People their Happiness shows Europe the Glory of your Throne”, concluded the second head. 38

Illustration by E. A. Tilly depicting the abbé Mical’s pair of talking heads, ca. 1783 — Source .

The Paris gossip and memoirist Louis Petit de Bachaumont noted that the heads were life-size, but covered tastelessly in gold. They mumbled some words and swallowed certain letters; moreover, their voices were hoarse and their diction slow (and their conversation, he might have added, uninspiring).

Yet despite all this, they undeniably had “the gift of speech”. The academicians appointed to examine Mical’s talking heads agreed that their enunciation was “very imperfect” but granted their approval to the work anyhow because it was done in imitation of nature and contained “the same results that we admire in dissecting . . . the organ of the voice.” Bachaumont recorded that the academicians were so impressed with the abbé Mical that, on the occasion of the Montgolfière balloon demonstration at Versailles on September 19, 1783, in which a sheep, a rooster, and a duck became the world’s first aviation passengers, the six delegates from the Académie des sciences invited Mical to accompany their delegation and presented him to the king as the author of the celebrated talking heads. 39

The following year, probably at the instigation of the mathematician Leonhard Euler, the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences sponsored a prize competition to determine the nature of the vowels and to construct an instrument like vox humana organ pipes to express them. C. G. Kratzenstein, a member of the Academy, won the prize. He used an artificial glottis (a reed) and organ pipes shaped according to the situation of the tongue, lips, and mouth in the pronunciation of the vowels. 40

Several more people built talking heads before the turn of the century. Among them was a Hungarian engineer named Wolfgang von Kempelen who had been hired at the age of twenty-one by the Empress Maria Theresa to serve at the court of the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna. He had achieved fame in 1769 when, for the amusement of his patroness, Kempelen had built an android Turk that played an expert game of chess (by virtue of the expert human chess player cleverly hidden inside). A couple decades later, Kempelen set out to uncover the secret of articulate speech. In 1791, he published “a description of a speaking machine” in which he reported having attached bellows and resonators to musical instruments that resembled the human voice, such as oboes and clarinets; he had also tried, like Kratzenstein, modifying vox humana organ pipes. 41 Through twenty years of such attempts, he had been sustained, he said, by the conviction that “ speech must be imitable ”. The resulting apparatus had bellows for lungs, a glottis of ivory, a leather vocal tract with a hinged tongue, a rubber oral cavity, a mouth whose resonance could be altered by opening and closing valves, and a nose with two little pipes as nostrils. Two levers on the device connected with whistles and a third with a wire that could be dropped onto the reed. These enabled the machine to pronounce liquids and fricatives: Ss, Zs, and Rs. 42

Plates depicting the components of artificial and natural speech from Wolfgang von Kempelen’s The Mechanism of Speech (1791) — Source .

This machine produced an empirical finding reminiscent of Vaucanson’s discovery that the blowing pressure for a given note depended upon the preceding note. Kempelen reported that he had first tried to produce each sound in a given word or phrase independently but failed because the successive sounds needed to take their shape from one another: “The sounds of speech become distinct only by the proportion that exists among them, and in the linking of whole words and phrases.” Listening to his machine’s blurred speech, Kempelen perceived a further constraint upon the mechanization of language: the reliance of comprehension upon context. 43

Kempelen’s machine was only moderately successful. It reportedly prattled in a childish voice, reciting vowels and consonants. It pronounced words such as “Mama” and “Papa”, and uttered some phrases, such as “you are my friend—I love you with all my heart”, “my wife is my friend”, and “come with me to Paris”, but indistinctly. 44 Today the machine resides at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. Kempelen and his supporters emphasized that the device was imperfect and explained that it was not so much a speaking machine in itself as a machine that demonstrated the possibility of constructing a speaking machine. 45

After this flurry of activity in the 1770s, 80s, and 90s, there was a decline in interest in speech simulation. A few people over the course of the nineteenth century, including the inventors Charles Wheatstone and Alexander Graham Bell, built their own versions of Kempelen’s and Mical’s speaking machines and of other talking heads from an earlier period. 46 But for the most part, designers of artificial speech turned their attention once again to speech synthesis rather than simulation: reproducing the sounds of human speech by other means rather than trying to reproduce the actual organs and physiological processes of speech. 47

In 1828, Robert Willis — a professor of applied mechanics at Cambridge who had earlier rejected the possibility of the Chessplayer’s intelligence — wrote disparagingly that most people who had investigated the nature of the vowel sounds “appear never to have looked beyond the vocal organs for their origin”, apparently assuming that the vowel sounds could not exist without being produced by the vocal organs. In other words, they had treated the vowels as “physiological functions of the human body” rather than as “a branch of acoustics”. In fact, Willis argued, vowel sounds could perfectly well be produced by other means. 48 Whether or not the vocal organs themselves could be simulated artificially became a separate question from whether the sounds of speech could be reproduced. As late as 1850, the French physiologist Claude Bernard wrote in his notebook: “The larynx is a larynx and the crystalline lens is a crystalline lens, that is to say their mechanical or physical conditions are realized nowhere but in the living organism.” 49

Photograph of Joseph Faber’s “Euphonia” talking machine, ca. 1846 — Source .

Disenchantment with speech simulation was so deep that when a German immigrant to America named Joseph Faber designed quite an impressive talking head in the late 1840s, he could not get anyone to take any notice of it. Faber’s talking head was modeled on Kempelen’s and Mical’s, but was far more elaborate. It had the head and torso of a man once again dressed like a Turk, and inside were bellows, an ivory glottis and tongue, a variable resonance chamber, and a mouth cavity with a rubber palate, lower jaw, and cheeks. The machine could pronounce all the vowels and consonants, and was connected by way of levers to a keyboard of seventeen keys, so that Faber could play it like a piano. He first exhibited the machine in New York City in 1844, where it aroused very little interest. He then took it to Philadelphia where he had no better luck. P. T. Barnum found Faber and his talking head there, renamed the machine the “Euphonia”, and took them on tour to London, but even Barnum could not make a success of it. Finally the Euphonia was exhibited in Paris in the late 1870s, where it was mostly ignored, and soon thereafter all traces of it disappear. 50

The moment for talking heads had passed. In the early part of the twentieth century, designers of artificial speech moved on from mechanical to electrical speech synthesis. 51 The simulation of the organs and process of speaking — of the trembling glottis, the malleable vocal tract, the supple tongue and mouth — was specific to the last decades of the eighteenth century, when philosophers and mechanicians and paying audiences were briefly preoccupied with the idea that articulate language was a bodily function: that Descartes’ divide between mind and body might be bridged in the organs of speech.

Notes Show Notes

• On the legend of Albertus Magnus’s artificial man, see Eugenio Battisti, L’antirinascimento (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), 226; and Sarah Higley, “The Legend of the Learned Man’s Android”, in *Retelling Tales: Essays in
• El Tostado notably adapted a story associated with Pope Sylvester. See Joseph R. Jones, “Historical Materials for the Study of the Cabeza Encantada Episode in Don Quijote II.62", Hispanic Review 41, no. 1 (1979): 91–92.
• El Tostado quoted in Gabriel Naudé, Apologie pour tous les grands hommes, qui ont esté accusez de magie (Paris: Eschart, 1669), 382–83. For the android’s dictation of Albert’s writings, see the article “Androïdes” in Ephraim Chambers et al., A Supplement to Mr. Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, or, Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , 2 vols. (London: W. Innys and J. Richardson, 1753).
• Naudé, Apologie , 385–88.
• Ibid., 389–90. Naudé is referring to the statue of Memnon on the Nile River that ancient authors said made sounds with the rising sun. See, for example, Callistratus, “On the Statue of Memnon”, in Elder Philostratus, Younger Philostratus, Callistratus , trans. Arthur Fairbanks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1931. On the speaking statue of Memnon, see also Paul Henry Stanhope, “The Statue of Memnon”, London Quarterly Review (April 1875): 278–84.
• Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique , 4 vols. (Amsterdam: P. Brunel, 1740), 1:131.
• Ibid., 1:130.
• See the article “Androïdes”, in Scott, Supplement .
• Jacques Vaucanson, Mécanisme du fluteur automate , trans. J. T. Desaguliers (Buren, the Netherlands: F. Knuf, 1979), 10–20. “One can substitute another flute entirely in the place of the one he plays”: Luynes, Mémoires, 2:12–13. Similarly, the abbé Desfontaines emphasized that it was “the fingers positioned variously on the holes of the flute that vary the tones . . . . In a word art has done here all that nature does in those who play the flute well. That is what can be seen and heard, beyond a doubt”, in Pierre Desfontaines, “Lettre CLXXX sur le Flûteur automate et l’Aristipe moderne”, Observations sur les écrits modern 12 (March 30, 1738), 339. On audiences’ initial disbelief that the flute player was actually playing his flute, see the reports cited in Alfred Chapuis and Edmond Droz, utomata: A Historical and Technological Study , trans. Alec Reid (Geneva: Editions du Griffon, 1958), 274; Alexander Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instruments , trans. Iris Urwin (London: Batchworth Press, 1959), 85–86; and David Lasocki’s preface to Vaucanson, Mécanisme du fluteur automate , [ii].
• Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, “Eloge de Vaucanson” (1782), in Œuvres de Condorcet , ed. Arthur O'Connor and Fraçois Arago, 12 vols (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1847–49), 2:643–60; André Doyon and Lucien Liaigre, Jacques Vaucanson, mècanicien de génie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), chaps. 1–2.
• AS, Registre des procès-verbaux des séances for April 26 and 30, 1739.
• “Nouvelles à la main au marquis de Langaunay”, letter dated May 12, 1738, BNF, Ms Fr. 13700, no 2; Doyon and Liaigre, Vaucanson , 30–34, 41.
• Mercure de France (April 1738), 739; Doyon and Liaigre, Vaucanson , 51. On the vogue that Vaucanson launched, see also Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), chapter 5.
• Le pour et contre (1738), 213; Doyon and Liaigre, Vaucanson , 53, 61.
• Desfontaines, “Lettre”, 340. The review of Vaucanson’s treatise on the flute player in the Journal des sçavans also emphasized the role of anatomical and physical research in informing the android’s design. See Journal des sçavans (1739), 441. See also Doyon and Liaigre, Vaucanson , 51.
• See d’Alembert’s 1751 article “Androïde”, in Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie , 1:448.
• Doyon and Liaigre, Vaucanson , 41.
• See Vaucanson, Mécanisme du fluteur automate , 10–20. This process was the precursor of the procedure by which the first musical recordings were made, during the second and third decades of the twentieth century, when pianists such as Claude Debussy, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Arthur Rubinstein, and Scott Joplin marked out rolls for player pianos.
• Doyon and Liaigre, Vaucanson , 53, 61.
• Vaucanson, “Letter to the Abbé Desfontaines”, in Mécanisme du fluteur automate , 23– 24.
• Hermann von Helmholtz explained the effects of partials in his Lehre von den Tonempfindungen . I am grateful to Myles Jackson for helping me to figure out the causes underlying Vaucanson’s acoustical discovery.
• This description appeared in conjunction with Le Cat’s Traité de la saignée (1739) as its “experimental part”, in order “to confirm by experience” Le Cat’s theory of bleeding; see Doyon and Liaigre, “Méthodologie”, 298–99.
• Le Cornier de Cideville to Fontenelle, December 15, 1744, in Tougard, Documents , 1:52–54, at 53. See Doyon and Liaigre, “Méthodologie”, 300.
• Registre-Journal des Assemblées et Déliberations de l’Académie des sciences . . . établie on 1744: 3 (manuscript non classé de la Bibliothèque publique de Rouen), cited in Doyon and Liaigre, “Méthodologie”, 300.
• Cervantes, Don Quixote , trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Viking, 1958), chap. 62. On this episode in the novel, see Jones, “Historical Materials”, 101–2.
• Martin Del Río, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex (Venice, 1640), 26.
• Kircher, Phonurgia Nova , 161, quoted in Jones, “Historical Materials”, 99.
• Jones, “Historical Materials”, 99.
• Desfontaines, “Lettre”, 341.
• Denys Dodart, “Sur les causes de la voix de l’homme et de ses différens tons”, in Année 1700: Mémoires of Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences (Amsterdam: Gerard Kuyper, 1700): 244–93; Denys Dodart, “Supplément au Mémoire sur la voix et sur les tons”, in Année 1706: Mémoires of Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences (Amsterdam: Pierre de Coup, 1706): 136–48; Denys Dodart, “Suite de la première partie du Supplément”, in Année 1706: Mémoires of Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences *Amsterdam: Pierre de Coup, 1706), 388–410; and Denys Dodart, “Supplément au Mémoire sur la voix et sur les tons”, in Année 1707: Mémoires of Histoire de l’Académie royale des science (Amsterdam: Pierre de Coup, 1707): 66–81. For Fontenelle’s commentary on Dodart’s memoirs, see Fontenelle’s three articles “Sur la formation de la voix” (1700, 1706, and 1707) in the volumes cited above.
• Fontenelle, “Sur la formation de la voix” (1707), 20.
• Antoine Court de Gébelin, Le monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne , 9 vols. (Paris: Chez l’auteur, 1773–82), 2:83–84.
• La Mettrie, L’homme machine , 190.
• John Wilkins, Mathematicall Magick, or, The Wonders That May Be Performed by Mathematicall Geometry (London: Sa. Gellibrand, 1648), 177–78.
• Charles Darwin, The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society (London: For J. Johnson by T. Bensley, 1803): 119–20.
• Têtes parlantes inventées et exécutées par M. l’abbé Mical. (Extrait d’un ouvrage qui a pour titre: Système de prononciation figurée, applicable à toutes les langues et exécuté sur les langues française et anglaise) , VZ-1853, BNF; Rivarol, “Lettre à M. le president de”, 20–24; Rivarol, Discours , 79–82; Bachaumont, Mémoires , 11: 237, 13: 270, 26: 214–216; Séris, Langages et machines , 245; Chapuis and Gélis, Monde , 2:204–206. According to Rivarol, Mical also built “an entire Concert in which the figures, as big as life, made Music from morning till evening”, “Lettre à M. le president de”, 29.
• AS, Registre des procès-verbaux des séances for September 3, 1783; Bachaumont, Mémoires , 26: 214–16.
• Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination , (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 188–89, 198; Jean-Pierre Séris, Langages et machines à l’âge classique (Paris: Hachette, 1995), 247.
• Kempelen, Mécanisme de la parole , 394–464. On Kempelen’s and others’ attempts to simulate human speech in the last third of the eighteenth century, see also Hankins and Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination , chap. 8; and Séris, Langages et machines , 245– 46.
• Kempelen, Mécanisme de la parole , 395–400, 405, 415–59.
• Ibid., 401.
• Ibid., 463.
• Karl Gottlieb Windisch, Inanimate Reason; or, A Circumstantial Account of that Astonishing Piece of Mechanism, De Kempelen’s Chess-Player (London: S. Bladon, 1784), 49.
• On Wheatstone’s and Bell’s reproductions, see James L. Flanagan, “Voices of Men and Machines”, in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 51 (1972): 1375–87; James L. Flanagan, Speech Analysis, Synthesis, and Perception (Berlin: Springer, 1965), 166–71; M. R. Schroeder, “A Brief History of Synthetic Speech” Speech Communication 13 (1993): 231– 37; and Hankins and Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination , 218–19.
• Hermann von Helmholtz, for example, built a machine using tuning forks and resonance chambers to produce the vowel sounds, described in Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music , trans. Alexander J. Ellis (New York: Dover, 1954), 399.
• Robert Willis, “On the Vowel Sounds, and on Reed Organ-Pipes.” Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 3 (1830): 231–68.
• Claude Bernard, Cahier de notes, 1850–1860 , ed. Mirko Dražen Grmek (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), 171. This was probably in response to the assertion of Bernard’s mentor, François Magendie, that “I see in the lung a bellows, in the trachea, a vent, in the glottis a reed . . . . We have for the eye an optical apparatus, for the voice a musical instrument, for the stomach a living retort.” François Magendie, Phénomènes physiques de la vie: Leçons professées au collège de France , 4 vols (Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1842).
• See David Lindsay, “Talking Head”, in Invention and Technology (Summer 1997): 57–63; and Hankins and Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination , 214–16.
• Cf. Hankins and Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination , 216, where the authors identify a partial and passing return to “more humanoid apparatus” in the “last years of the nineteenth century”.

Public Domain Works

• Internet Archive
• Library of Congress French original, 1738
• Oregon Health and Science University Library
• Internet Archive French translation
• Project Gutenberg

Further Reading

A collection of essays examining efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to understand living beings by comparison with inanimate mechanisms.

An exploration into how the automata of early modern Europe can be seen as models for the new science of living things, tracing questions of science and agency through Descartes, Leibniz, Lamarck, and Darwin, among others.

The eighteenth century saw the creation of a number of remarkable mechanical androids that served as illustrations of the sentimental culture of a civil society rather than expressions of anxiety about the mechanisation of humans by industrial technology.

The Public Domain Review receives a small percentage commission from sales made via the links to Bookshop.org (10%) and Amazon (4.5%). Thanks for supporting the project! For more recommended books, see all our “ Further Reading ” books, and browse our dedicated Bookshop.org stores for US and UK readers.

Jessica Riskin is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University. Her teaching, research and writing focus on the history of modern science, ideas, culture and politics. She is the author most recently of The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument Over What Makes Living Thing Tick and is currently writing a book about Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the French naturalist who coined the term “biology” around 1800 and developed the first theory of evolution.

Excerpted and adapted from “The First Android”, a chapter from The Restless Clock by Jessica Riskin. © 2016 by Jessica Riskin. Reprinted with permission of The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.

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• Culture & History

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