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12.7 Will adjectives such as innovative and novel attract
attention?

The problem with novel and innovative is that they give no indication as to how
something is novel. For example, what does novel mean in the following title?

A novel method for learning English
If your research is not novel then no one would want to read about it anyway. You
need to explain to readers what makes it novel. More explicit adjectives to replace
novel could be: computerized, guaranteed, high-performance, low-cost, minimal-
stress, no-cost, pain-free.

Finally, no one is likely to include the words novel or innovative when Googling
papers in their fi eld.

12.8 Is it a good idea to make my title concise by having
a string of nouns?
The title in S1 is almost incomprehensible for a reader.

S1. *Cultural heritage audiovisual material multilingual search gathering requirements

However, for the author S1 will be perfectly clear. You, as an author, know exactly
what your title means and so for you it does not seem a problem to put lots of nouns
together with no prepositions or verbs. Some of my students have even told me that
to them it seems “more English and more elegant”. This is simply not the case.

A much clearer version of S1 is S2.

S2. Gathering requirements for multilingual searches for audiovisual materials in the cultural
heritage

S2 contains prepositions and the defi nite article, which help to make the meaning
much clearer for readers.

Below are some more examples.