Recently in the Headlines Category

Back in March, I came across this AP headline:

More than math, reading important

I read it as saying that reading was more important than math, but the article is about attempts to "broaden the focus [of education] beyond math and reading." So I started to write an entry here to make fun of the headline for having nothing to do with the article body.

And then I realized that I'd misread the headline.

It's using the common headline technique of replacing an "and" with a comma. So it really meant that more topics than math and reading are important.

So it's a perfectly reasonable headline for the article, except for the ease of misreading it. I would still say it's a bad headline, but on very different grounds than my original impression.

Some years back, I saw an employment ad for a major computer company in which all the text said "Lorem ipsum." Clearly someone was supposed to fill in actual copy, but had neglected to do so.

Something similar, though less extreme, happened in the San Diego Union-Tribune the other day, when their new automated pagination system made some mistakes:

A front-page story sends the reader to A10 to continue the story but you won't find the story title. Instead, you'll find the word "Slug"[...]. Below that, you'll find the phrase "Three lines of jumphed right in here, yuppers."

(And btw, I hadn't previously encountered the word "jumphed," but I like it. In case it's not clear, it refers to a "jump headline." See also the question of whether to use jump heds or jump words.)

Headline today on the BBC website:

Pope could make Birmingham visit

Birmingham hasn't visited in months, and I was beginning to think it never would. So I'm pleased to see that the Pope has the ability to force it to visit. I only hope he chooses to exercise that ability.

I know what an attosecond is. (It's 10^-18 seconds.)

What surprised me was seeing the word used metaphorically and in passing in a general-interest news article:

Stress may be most readily associated with the attosecond pace of postindustrial society, but the body's stress response is one of our oldest possessions.

I'm used to seeing words like "millisecond" or "microsecond" in that kind of context. These days, maybe "nanosecond." But this New York Times article's author has skipped all the way from nanoseconds past picoseconds and femtoseconds to attoseconds.

Side note: That article also has a headline I particularly like: "Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop." And I like the phrase "chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning."

AP headline this morning:

Obama ventures back to hurting region _ with money

I think that underscore was intended to be a dash, but either way, I initially read the headline as saying that, having stopped his hurting of a region at some previous time, Obama had now started hurting that region again, and this time he was hurting it using money.

I suppose the word "ventures" should've prevented my misinterpretation; maybe it's just that I'm not entirely awake yet.

Headline from a news story:

Gay rights activist makes Clinton stop

What did the activist make Clinton stop doing, and was it President Clinton or Secretary Clinton?

Answer: Neither: the story is from the Clinton Herald, a newspaper from Clinton, Iowa, and "stop" in that headline is a noun, not a verb.

I was amused.

Context disambiguates!

A headline I saw in late October, apparently provided by Dow Jones Newswires, read:

CORRECT: Microsoft Executive Is Harry Patz, Not Putz

The corrected article is titled "Wireless Carriers Target Young Texters With Latest Phones" but I was really just amused by the headline of the correction.

But is it bad form to make fun of a misspelling of someone's name? Even if I'm not making fun of the person himself? I'm not sure.

I was very amused by this headline from One Bakersfield Online today:

Bills would provide $1.2 billion to freeze victims in California

Turns out it's referring to money that would be used to help out "growers and workers affected by a recent crop freeze." But every time I look at the headline, I think they're planning to take people who are victims of something or other and freeze them.

I was amused by this headline the other day:

Blair wins terror glorification vote

--The Independent, 15 February 2006

Turns out the Terrorism Bill outlaws glorification of terrorism. The headline made me think Blair was trying to glorify terrorism.