About Tagliners

Tagliners is a reference site about the line on the poster. A tagline is the short phrase a studio prints beside a film's title to sell it, and most of them are forgotten within a season. A few outlive the film. We trace those: which film, which year, the exact wording, who is credited with it and what the sources say it did.

Around the lines sits the machinery that carries them: one-sheet posters, billing blocks, rating boxes, teaser and theatrical trailers, red-band and green-band, the trailer voice. Those pages explain how each part works and who sets its rules.

What it covers

• Famous taglines: The story behind taglines people still quote: the film, the year, the exact wording on the poster, who is credited with it and what the line did for the picture.
• By genre: How each genre sells itself in one line: horror taglines that dare you, comedy lines that set up a joke, sci-fi lines that promise a world. Real posters, dated and sourced.
• By decade: Poster taglines from the 1950s to the 2010s, grouped by decade: what studios promised in each era, with the film, the year and the source for every line.
• Writing taglines: What a tagline is, how it differs from a slogan, a logline and a catchphrase, how long it runs and who writes it, with examples from real posters.
• Film marketing: How a film is sold: poster sizes and billing blocks, rating boxes, teaser and theatrical trailers, red-band and green-band, trailer voices and sound, and what studios spend.

What it does not cover

It does not review films, sell posters, rank taglines by merit, write taglines for hire or give legal advice on credits and contracts. Where a page describes a guild or theater-owner rule, it reports the rule as published and tells you to check the current text before you rely on it.

Who writes it

Pages are researched and written by the Tagliners editors, a small team that signs its work as a team. The site does not give any one person's name, because the claims on a page are meant to stand on their sources, not on a byline. Every page links to its sources, so you can check any sentence yourself.

How a page is made

1. Pick a question people ask. Each page starts from a real search question and the questions that Google lists beside it.
2. Collect the sources. We save each source page and copy the passage that supports a fact. A fact without a passage is not used.
3. Rank the sources. Film archives, libraries and industry bodies come first; reference works and the trade press fill in the rest. See the editorial policy for the full order and for what is never used.
4. Write the answer first. Each page opens with a short answer, then sections that open with a sentence you can quote.
5. Check. Every number, date and name is matched to its source passage by script and by a read-through before publication.
6. Date it. Each page shows when it was published, updated and checked, and each source shows the day it was read.

Updates and corrections

Pages are re-checked when a source changes or a reader reports a problem, and at least once a year. Every correction after publication is logged on the corrections page with the date and what changed. The site launched in October 2026, so most pages carry that month as their first check date.

Contact

Write to editors@tagliners.org with the page address and, if you can, the source that shows the right fact. More on the contact page.