9. According to Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Sweden has overtaken US in terms of “e-readiness,” defined as “the extent to which a country’s business environment is ready for Internet-based commercial opportunities… Ranking is based on factors such as connectivity and technology infrastructure, business environment, consumer and business adoption, social and cultural infrastructure, and legal and policy environment and support services.” They attribute downturn in US economy for new dominance by Scandinavian countries in particular.

10. 580 million people worldwide now have Internet access, as opposed to 563 million in 3rd quarter of 2002. Leaders: The US posted largest increase in number of adults, but as a percentage of population, Spain saw a 22% increase. Germany, UK and Italy have largest at-home Internet populations in Europe. Sweden, Hong Kong and Netherlands and Australia have most mature Internet markets. (Nielsen NetRating, 2003)

11. According to CyberAtlasInternet, a sample of e-commerce sites recorded a 72.5% failure rate. The week before Mother’s Day (2003), TeaLeaf analysts uncovered Web application errors in 75% of gift, card, candy and flower sites they examined, with almost 65% attributed to user failure errors, which typically go undetected by site administrators.

Understanding mindset of those culling through press releases will help you craft informative headlines. If you need a lot of words to write a clear headline, go ahead. A good guideline is to include as many of journalism's classic "Five W's" in headline as you can: who, what, when, where and why or how. To address editors' top three concerns, make sure you specify what you're promoting, who would care about it and what makes it newsworthy.

To return to three unfortunate examples found online, we can fix first specimen along these lines:

The New Underground Railroad, New Book, Helps Free Wage Slaves from Bondage With a Beginner's Introduction to Stocks, Bonds and Investing.

The second headline improves with a few more details:

HP Wheels Out Year-long Traveling Exhibition of Truck- Mounted Homes Filled with Digital Photography, Computing and Entertainment Products.

And annoyance factor disappears from third headline when we revise it as follows:

Little Kids Updates Sqwish Ball, Specialty Toy from 1990's for Age 5 and Up, With a Holographic Shimmer.

If after adding clarity, you can also inject some wordplay or fun into headline, go ahead. But media people giving your headlines just three or four seconds of attention aren't really looking for entertainment. They're on a hunt for relevance, and cuteness runs danger of getting in their way.