How to write a poster title that states the finding

The title is the only part of a poster everybody reads. People walk the aisle scanning titles the way they scan a newspaper, and most decide from the title alone whether to stop. That makes it worth far more effort than it usually gets, because the typical title is written at submission time, describes the topic, and says nothing about what was found.

Put the finding in the title

Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation calls the title your newspaper headline: short, sharp and compelling. A headline reports what happened. It does not announce that something was studied.

Compare two titles for the same study. “Night time temperature and emergency admissions in older adults: eight years of city records” names the variables and the data. A reader learns the topic and nothing else. The finding on that board is that admissions rose 14.2 percent once the night minimum passed 22.1 degrees, and that the daytime maximum added nothing once the night figure was in the model. A title built from that finding might read “Warm nights, not hot days, predict emergency admissions in older adults”. The passer by now knows the answer, and the ones who care about heat warnings will stop.

That descriptive title is on the public health poster example, and the board compensates well: a strip of four numbers runs across the top, so the finding is still the first thing a reader meets. But the strip sits below the title, and the title is what someone reads from the far side of the aisle.

There is evidence behind the preference, even if it comes from journal articles rather than posters. Paiva and colleagues analysed 423 research articles and found that titles describing results were cited more often than titles describing methods, and that short titles presenting results or conclusions were independently associated with more citations.

Keep it short enough to read from the aisle

Length is the second lever. The same Paiva study found short titles were viewed and cited more often, and Letchford and colleagues found that journals publishing papers with shorter titles received more citations per paper. On a poster the constraint is physical as well: every extra word forces the type smaller or pushes the title onto another line.

Purrington’s advice is practical. Avoid colons where you can, because they are overused, and if you must use one, make sure it does not push the title onto a third line. Two lines at a large size beat three lines at a smaller one.

A quick test: read the title aloud. If you need a breath in the middle, it is too long. Cut the method, the setting or the sample size first, since all three have a home elsewhere on the board.

A second test uses paper. Purrington suggests printing a miniature version of the poster on a letter sized sheet to check whether people can read it. Do the same with the title alone: print the board on A4, pin it to a wall, and walk back two metres. A4 is a quarter of the width of A0, so the small print read from two metres looks about the way the full board looks from eight, a fair stand in for someone glancing along a row of boards. If you cannot read the finding from there, shorten the title until you can, rather than making the type heavier. Then ask one person outside your group to tell you what the study found. If their answer matches your key number, the title is done.

Drop the jargon a neighbouring field would not know

A poster session mixes specialists with people from adjacent fields. Purrington suggests writing the introduction for an intelligent reader outside your field, and the same test suits the title. Abbreviations are the usual culprit. A title full of initialisms reads as a private note to three colleagues.

Numbers, on the other hand, travel well. The engineering test poster example reads “Screwed steel flitch plates raise the failure load of 240 mm timber beams by 48 percent”. A reader who has never heard of a flitch plate still understands that one fixing method is much stronger than the other, and by how much.

Use the subtitle for what the title left out

The subtitle, or the eyebrow line above the title, carries what a specialist needs to judge the finding: the design, the sample and the setting. “A cluster randomised trial” after the clinical trial title does that job, and so does “Evidence from 312 regional cafes” after the economics question.

The psychology research poster example uses the eyebrow differently. A small line reads research question, and the title beneath it is the question itself: does ten minutes of paced breathing before an exam lower test anxiety? It works because the first sentence of results answers it in the same words, yes, by 5.7 points. A question title with no visible answer nearby leaves the reader to do the work, which in the Paiva study is reflected in fewer citations for titles with a question mark.

Rewrite a weak title in four steps

1. Write the single sentence you would say to a colleague who asked what you found.
2. Delete words that describe the process: investigating, exploring, examining, a study of.
3. Put the most specific number or comparison in, if you have one.
4. Move the design and setting to the subtitle.

Applied to the undergraduate research poster example, a draft like “An observational audit of reusable cup use before and after a pricing intervention at campus cafes” becomes the title the board actually carries: “A 50 cent discount raised reusable cup use from 12 to 29 percent at two campus cafes”. The limitation, that a before and after audit cannot prove cause, belongs in the conclusion, where that board states it plainly.

The table below sorts eleven titles from the poster examples by type and shows what a passer by learns from each without reading any further.

Common mistakes

A title that announces a topic. “Heat and health” is a session name, not a poster title.

The finding hidden behind a colon. When the answer comes after “a study of”, most readers never reach it.

All capitals. It slows reading and flattens species and gene names. Use sentence case.

A question with no answer in sight. If the title asks, the board must answer where the eye lands next.

Promising more than the design supports. A before and after audit cannot say “causes”. Choose verbs the study can defend, and let the discussion carry the caveats. The sizing that makes any title readable is covered in the research poster text size guide, and the blocks a title sits above are described in what a research poster is.

Build it

Every one of the forty A0 layouts behind research poster templates has a title text slot and an author block, with twenty layouts authored for portrait at 1656 by 2340 pixels and twenty for landscape at 2340 by 1656. Title size comes from the theme’s type ramp, and the text controls also offer font, colour, weight and alignment, so a longer title can be set smaller without leaving the design. When the generator writes a first draft it keeps each slot within its character budget, which means a long title is rewritten shorter rather than cut off. The figure the title introduces is edited in place, as the charts and diagrams tutorial shows.