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Should You Use Quotation Marks in Your Titles?
It was really kind of interesting because she didn’t leave me a comment on the blog; but rather she sent me an email and asked about several of the style elements I’d incorporated.
She is starting her own blog and I suppose wanted my opinion and wondered what the rhyme and reason might be behind my style choices.
Here are my feelings about the quotation marks around a title of a blog post.
Title preference: quotation marks or not and why?
Studies have shown that quotation marks grab attention.
They humanize the text as though someone you were speaking with was talking directly to you.
They tend to draw the eye to learn what someone is saying about a subject.
One study cited said that titles utilizing quotation marks were read 35% more often than those without them.
That is a significant number to me.
Color preference: dark blue. Why?
First let me remind you that there may be certain limitations in styles that you can employ, as in the case of a blog network, or in certain types of platform applications.
I wanted dark blue for my “home colors.”
Why? It’s classy, credible, and authoritative.
The graphics you see at all my web sites are my own design.
I wanted dark blue as my main color so I designed the style elements with that in mind.
So why did I choose dark blue? I have researched several web site usability studies and found that in almost everybody’s book, that is the color of choice for readability, professionalism, and credibility.
Not only that, but a large majority of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet utilize dark blue as their major color.
These guys have tested and tweaked what they do and they all have come to the same conclusion.
So who am I to run counter to all the research and effort they have gone into identifying the best color to use on their sites?
In addition, dark blue goes nicely with blue text coloring for active links.
Again, if you look at all the major web sites, they tend to favor blue as their color to identify “click-able” text.
My site is no different.
I urge you to visit any of the large Internet sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN, USAToday, Amazon, Ebay, CNN, etc. and notice the overall color choices of the site and the text linking colors.
They’re all blue or dark blue.
My friend also asked why I put an image on every post.
I want my blog to be a little different. I like the idea of making it visually pleasing by breaking up the text a little bit. And it’s something that sets my blog apart from others.
I try to use small, colorful, consistent images that add to the story I’m telling.
The images are relevant to the topic of the blog post.
I am far from critical of others that choose different conventions. Personalizing a web site can be very effective. I just figure that there must be a reason many of the very large and successful web sites use similar colors and styles.
To your online business success,
Steve Browne
www.stevebrownedirect.com