Score your headline before you publish it
Paste in a headline and get a breakdown of word count, power words, emotional balance, clarity and character limits, along with three specific suggestions for improving it. The scorer runs in your browser and gives you a starting point for editing, not a verdict on whether the headline will work.
Score a headline, and understand why it scores that way
The Headline Scorer checks a headline against five measurable traits: word count, power words, emotional balance, clarity and character limits, then gives three specific suggestions for improving it. This guide sets out what each trait means for commercial copy, so a founder or in-house marketer testing a headline understands why the score reads as it does. The tool works from patterns in the text, so it can misjudge a headline that breaks its rules deliberately, which is worth knowing before you treat the score as the last word.
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What the scorer measures
Read what each of the five measures, word count, power words, emotional balance, clarity and character limits, actually checks for and why it matters in a headline meant to sell something.
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How to use the scorer
Paste a headline in, read the breakdown line by line, apply the suggestions the scorer gives, then run the revised version through again to see what changed.
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Where to go next
Move from the score to the fuller guide on writing headlines, or check the rest of the page with the readability checker.
How to use the scorer
The scorer works through four steps, and each one earns its place: paste, read, apply, test again. Paste the headline you are working on into the box above, and it returns a breakdown.
- Paste the headline you want to test into the box.
- Read the breakdown underneath it, dimension by dimension.
- Apply the suggestions one at a time, and check whether each change actually moves the score in the direction you expected.
- Paste the revised headline back in and test again before you commit to it.
Read the breakdown before you touch the wording
A blended score can hide the actual problem. A headline might lose marks on character limits while scoring well on clarity, and the fix for that is trimming. Reading the breakdown first tells you which part of the headline to change, so you are not guessing which word to cut or replace.
Test again rather than trusting the first pass
Changing one word can shift more than one score at once: a shorter word might fix the character limit but flatten the emotional balance. The scorer checks for patterns in the text, such as word count, power words and clarity markers; it cannot judge whether the claim in your headline is true, relevant to your reader, or right for your product, so the score is a starting point for your own judgement rather than a verdict on the headline. Testing again after each change is how you catch the trade-off before it reaches your page.
Score another headline, or check the rest of the page
The scorer looks at one headline at a time, so run each option you're considering separately and compare the breakdowns side by side. A headline can only do so much on its own, though, so once you've settled on one, it's worth checking that the body copy underneath reads as clearly. The readability checker will tell you if it does.
No account needed. Works on any device. Always free.
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Type or paste a headline or subject line (up to 100 characters). This checks it against a plain-English UK method covering word count, power words, emotional versus rational balance, clarity and character limits, then suggests three specific fixes. Everything runs in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere or stored.
| Dimension | Score | Detail |
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Three suggestions
Method: this is a simple rule-based check built for this site, not a validated psychological or statistical model, and it is not the US-style "emotional marketing" scoring used by some other tools. It looks for plain-English power words, a rough emotional/rational word balance, jargon, passive voice, word count and character length against common UK limits. Treat the number as a prompt to review your headline, not as a verdict. All scoring happens on this device; no headline text leaves your browser.