I have recently noticed that the tense of paper titles can be somewhat odd. This previous question, In what tense (present/past) should papers be written?, has some great information but it doesn't directly answer for titles.
Some random titles:
- Improving source code search with natural language phrasal representations of method signatures
- A comparison of stemmers on source code identifiers for software search
- Using Formal Models to Objectively Judge Quality of Multi-Threaded Programs in Empirical Studies
- Modeling Programmer Navigation: A head-to-head empirical evaluation of predictive models
Most titles (in Computer Science) look to be present progressive. Is there a rule/reason behind this?
Answer
First: the usual (read: boring) way of writing academic paper titles is indeed without verbs:
A study of acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma
or using gerunds (which is a verb form, but in that case is used to construct a present progressive but a noun phrase):
Understanding acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma
However, I think include a verb is possible, and oftentimes makes the title much catchier and appealing to the non-specialist reader. For example, the titles I “quoted” above are of my own making, but the real title for the article (and believe me, you want to read it) is:
Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma, or Tintin goes to the neurologist
There: even if I know nothing of “acquired growth hormone deficiency” and “hypogonadotropic hypogonadism”, I know what the paper is about.
Now, if you use verbs in article titles, they are mostly going to be about established facts, generic questions, mathematical proofs, … which means you should write in the present tense.
- Vitamin C enriched diet can prevent scurvy
- Minesweeper is NP-complete
I particularly like to use questions in titles, as they make quite clear the problem you're tackling:
- How hard is the measurement of quartz hardness? A review of the commercial available apparatuses and their robustness
- How fast does the swallow fly? Reexamining the impact of the bird's geographical origin
In a few cases, you would talk about a historical event, and then you'd use the past tense:
- How World War One was won: the role of time travelers from the twenty-second century
- The CERN measurement was not a fluke: finally establishing the Higgs discovery at the 10-sigma level
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