parislemon

I’ve always hated the use of the word “exclusive” in titles. From what I see, 99% of the time the usage boils down to one of three things:

1) The author sucks at writing actual titles.

2) The author wants their story to appear much more important than it actually is. (“It says ‘exclusive’ so it must be important!”)

3) The author is an asshat who wants to make themselves appear more important than they actually are.

And then there’s the “exclusive” that Mashable published today. A new low. While running an infographic that no one else is likely to run is technically an “exclusive”, so is, say, posting a picture of your slap bracelet collection. The usage of the term in this headline is more along the lines of “sad”.

If your story is filled with good, exclusive information, it should speak for itself. Or maybe you shouldn’t be a writer.