Learning objectives
You can:
- Write an action title from a stated fact set, with a subject, a finite verb and the number that makes the claim checkable, and say which of three candidate numbers belongs there.
- Run the read-only-the-titles test on a deck, write out the argument the stack makes, and state honestly when it makes none.
- Diagnose a break in horizontal logic as a gap, a leap or a repeat, and name the slide that repairs each.
- Test vertical logic by asking whether a body proves its own title exactly, and identify bodies that prove less, more, or something else.
- Repair a title-body mismatch two ways, once by fixing the title and once by fixing the body, and choose between the repairs using the deck's chain rather than the slide alone.
- Decide the precision and the basis of a number in a title, and show how the same fact yields two defensible percentages on two bases.
- Cut a slide whose title is not a claim, state what the cut costs, and place the material where it can still be retrieved.
- Compute the two-line ceiling for a stated type size and slide width, and cut a title to fit without losing its number or its verb.
- Separate an honest qualifier from a hedge, and rewrite a hedge into a claim with a named condition under which it fails.
- Apply the machine's title rule, name the three cases where it is wrong, and say what a human overrule costs and what it buys.
Prerequisites & connections
Builds on. The pyramid work that comes immediately before this. You should arrive with a governing thought, a key line whose points do not overlap, and an SCQA opening, and you should already be able to say what makes a thought a thought rather than a topic. You also need the takeaway discipline from the track's entry point: one sentence, a claim, falsifiable, implying an action. Arithmetic at the level of percentages, shares and a two-factor decomposition is assumed throughout, since almost every title worth writing carries a number.
Feeds forward. PR4.03 takes an ordered set of true titles and asks what turns it into a story with an arc, a memorable exhibit and a costed recommendation. PR5.01 to PR5.03 apply the title discipline inside three archetypes, where a consulting body page, a board page and a research thesis page each impose their own conventions on what a title may claim. PR7.01 runs the whole sequence under time pressure on unseen data, and the read-only-the-titles test is one of its scored gates. The delivery module treats the title stack as the speaker's own map, since a presenter who has to remember an order has not written one.
Six neighbours own material that borders this one, and the non-overlaps are deliberate. PR2.03 owns the action title of a single chart, together with the focal point, small multiples and the dashboard layout; the craft of making one exhibit say one thing lives there, and the treatment below assumes it and works at the level of the sequence. PR4.01 owns the pyramid, SCQA and SCR, the MECE test on a key line, and the executive summary as the top two levels of the pyramid. PR3.02 owns the ghost deck and the dot-dash sketch, which is where headlines are first drafted on paper; the tests below are applied to a stack that already exists. PR0.01 owns the one-sentence takeaway, the audience profile and the medium choice. CN1.03 owns answer-first logic for a consulting case and hands off to the deck craft here. M10.03 owns the written analyst memo and one-pager, where a title becomes a section heading and the rules change.
1. The title is the slide
Watch how a deck is actually consumed and the case for spending real effort on titles makes itself. A reader opens the file, scrolls at roughly a page a second looking for the part that concerns them, stops on two or three pages, reads those properly, and forwards the file to somebody else with one line of their own. Every one of those behaviours passes through titles. The scroll reads nothing else. The stop is chosen by a title. The forward is summarised from titles, and the person receiving it will often read only the summary.