I USE THE INTERNET!?

This is to be the first in a rough guide to writing better headlines and descriptions for Digg submissions. Here we go!

First: Don’t start off with WTF. It adds nothing to the headline except fill space.

GM to import China-made vehicles by 2011 isn’t too bad of a headline on its own, except the story says they are planning to. It is not a certainty.

You could make a case that the three question marks were there to make it a possibility and not an absolute (Like Fox News does with things like “Obama a communist?”) but then you’re drawing attention to the fact that you’re using three question marks at the end of your headline. Why? For emphasis? The WTF in the beginning wasn’t enough?

And then it gets ugly. “I do not believe this. Do we have to sacrifice quality to save our auto industry? This is insane decision.”  We’ll ignore the missing article from in front of “insane,” typos happen to the best of us.

Thanks for the commentary, there, miketest. I was wondering what the submitter thought of the artic–wait. No, I don’t care. You wasted space and time by giving your opinion on the matter. On top of that, what does quality have to do with anything? Are the cars going to be labeled GM products? It doesn’t say that anywhere. And why does GM importing Chinese cars instantly mean quality issues? These imports represent a tiny fraction of GM’s sales.

From the article: [even selling 51,500 China-made cars a year, they] would only account for 1.6 percent of GM’s overall sales.

So there you go. Why not this for a description: General Motors plans on selling about 17,300 China-made vehicles in the U.S. in 2011. The number is expected to blossom to 51,500 units by the year 2014.

Yep, cut and pasted right from the story.

And much more useful than finding out the submitter thinks it is insane.

Submitted article here, digg submission here.