I've found that writers vary in their attitudes toward titles. Some, like me, find the title to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the paper to write. I savor the process of coming up with that attractive, two or three line statement that encapsulates the essence of a paper over which I have toiled for weeks or months. Others are rather ambivalent toward titles. They see them as a necessary part of a paper, but treat it as little more than an afterthought to be slapped on the cover page just before the final printing.
Regardless of your feelings about titles, you need one. Moreover, you need a title that really works for your paper and offers the reader an accurate and concise first impression of your argument. In this respect, I urge you to get in the habit of treating the title as an integral part of the paper instead of as a piece of metadata. By this, I mean that your title should both introduce and reinforce the crux of your argument and not simply provide a few simple terms that you might put into a search engine. Lets look at an example:
Title 1: Bicycle Commuting and Gas Prices
Title 2: A Push to Pedal: Rethinking the Bicycle as a Commuter Vehicle in an Era of Rising Gasoline Prices
While the first title gives us a general idea of what the paper will cover, it's really too vague. There's not even a hint of what direction the author's argument will take. We only know that the paper will probably explore some relationship between bicycle commuting and gas prices. Title #2 gives us much more vivid insight into this paper's thesis. We know that we are going to read about a movement to increase the use of bicycles for transportation, within the context of a current economic environment of rising fuel costs.
In your Turabian manual, Booth, et al. state that your title should be the "last thing you write" for your paper (108). Why? Because it's only after your paper is finished (or getting pretty close) when you will have a complete picture of your argument and know how to best shape your title. And, when you complete this last element of your paper, think about the key and phrases and concepts throughout your paper that best state the essence of your argument. Most likely, you'll find such phrases in your introduction (particularly in your thesis statement) and/or in your conclusion, two sections that are dedicated to packaging your overall argument.
While I agree that finalizing your title is best left as the last act of paper-writing, there's no reason why you shouldn't start jotting down title ideas earlier in the writing process. I believe that the process of articulating a title helps you think more critically about your paper as a whole. If you have a hard time coming up with a title that is any more specific than one or two nouns (like Title #1 in the above example), you might want to ask yourself why? Could it be that you yourself are unsure of how to articulate your thesis statement? Early in the writing process, this is probably fine. But, by keeping a "working title" alongside your "working thesis," you can use these two critical elements of your paper to help you shape (and reshape) your content. By letting the working title and working thesis really work, you have a built-in mechanism to monitor your clarity, organization, and depth of analysis.
While at the end of a long, arduous research and writing process, you may be tempted to throw down a couple of words that serve as a catch-all for your paper, please don't. Your hard work deserves an interesting title, so spend a little extra time on the first part of a paper anyone reads. The last thing you want is for the title to become the only part anyone reads.
PS> I didn't come up for a title for this post until after I finished writing (and rewriting) all of the above.
