A good one will hit you over the head. A bad one will make you yawn.

Literally the "hit line," a Schlagzeile is there to make you buy a newspaper or magazine, or click on an article online.

Headlines, or Schlagzeilen, tend to be juicier when it comes to celebrity news and tabloids. And many celebrities, it seems - Miley Cyrus comes to mind - have Schlagzeilen in mind when they decide on where to party, what to wear and who to date.

One of the most famous German headlines in recent years is pictured above. "Wir sind Papst" - "We are the pope" - nearly had more of an impact than the white smoke itself when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German clergyman, became pope in April 2005.

The same German tabloid, "Bild," won a prize for the best headline of 2013. "Yes We Scan," published in June, referred to the NSA affair in the United States.