---
name: Deck
slug: deck
category: typography
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: The short summary line set between a headline and the body, larger
  than body text and written to sell the article.
aliases:
  - name: standfirst
  - name: dek
  - name: subhead
tags:
  - content-design
  - editorial
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - eyebrow
    - heading
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: Headings in Typography (Uxcel)
    url: https://uxcel.com/lessons/headings-761
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the summary line under a headline
---

In a newsroom a deck is the line of type under the headline, and it has nothing
to do with slides. British papers call it the standfirst, American copy desks
often spell it dek to keep it out of the running text, and every one of those
names points at the same object: two or three lines set between the headline and
the first paragraph, larger and looser than body copy, whose job is to make a
reader who has stopped for the headline keep going.

What makes it a deck rather than an ornament is that it carries information the
headline does not. A headline can only hold one idea; the deck is where the
second one goes, along with the stakes, the number, the name, or the reason this
is running today. A line that says the headline again in different words has
spent the reader's attention on nothing, and that is the usual failure: decks
that restate are the reason so many people read them as decoration and skip
them. It is also what separates a deck from a subtitle, which is content to
qualify a title rather than add to it.

An [eyebrow](/eyebrow) is the other line in the same stack and the two are
routinely confused. An eyebrow sits above the headline and categorises,
naming the section, the series, or the kind of piece this is, in a word or two.
A deck sits below the headline and expands, giving the reader more of the story
in a full sentence. Both are [headings](/heading) in the loose sense and neither
is one in the structural sense: the deck in particular is a paragraph, and
marking it up as an `h2` to get the size gives a screen reader a heading that
introduces nothing.

Typographically it is the hinge of the whole stack. Set it clearly larger than
body copy and clearly smaller than the headline, usually lighter in weight and
at a wider measure, so it reads as a bridge rather than as a second headline.
It is also the line that most often gets a [line clamp](/line-clamp) in a card
or an index, because the deck is written at full length for the article page and
has to survive being cut to two lines in a feed. And where a
[drop cap](/drop-cap) is used, the deck is what stands between it and the
headline: the cap starts the body, the deck ends the display type.