Trends in sociology titles

Recent reflections on the state of publications in sociology (Becker, 2003) suggest that article titles are getting longer. I test this hypothesis with data from ASR since inception and a wider sample of papers from Sociological Abstracts between 1963 and 1999. My results indicate a rapid and widespread increase in title length. Further analyses suggest that title length does not predict citation, suggesting that long titles are not an avenue for getting more readers. Thanks to Randy Hodson, Joan Huber, David Jacobs, Lisa Keister, Ryan Light, Betty Menaghan, and members of the Social Structure Reading Group for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.