Average Grod's Average Blog

Why do people feel the need to use colons in titles so often these days? Head over to the list of books I want to read this year and you will see what I mean. Maybe I am stuck in a particular genre whose subject matter lends itself well to a sort of title: subtitle naming convention. I think authors (or more likely publishers) can't make up their minds when it comes to titles.

They need a catchy word or phrase to grab your attention regardless of the fact that it may not make much sense by itself. They need the post colon text to actually tell you what the book is about. After reading Sway and most of Freakenomics I am sure someone has probably studied this and I wouldn't be surprised if books sell better when they are titled in this fashion. I fear that games don't fair as well.

One of the best games I've ever played is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This seems like a fair title and anyone familiar with the series knows that CoD 1-3 were set in WWII. CoD 4 needed the subtitle to let people know that this game would update what was becoming an overused setting in the First Person Shooter Genre. CoD 5 was made by a different developer who revisited WWII albeit in Japan this time. They of course chose to go with the colon to further clarify that this would be a World War game. The developers of CoD 4 are hard at work on what would logically be CoD 6 but why go the easy route when the market has already been saturated with title: subtitle games? CoD 6 will be Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2. How long will it be until we see a Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2: Zakhaev's Revenge? Zakhaev was the main bad guy in CoD 4. Sooner or later someone will make a game or book with more than one colon and it is just gonna sound silly. Not cool, not clarifying, and not even intriguing.

Take a hint from Microsoft who in a rare moment of lucidity has gone back to 1990 and gone with a moniker that is both traditional and easy to understand for its latest Windows product. That's right. The new Windows which is due out later this year will actually be called Windows 7. I would have named it Windows7: What Vista Should Have Been.