A reader was momentarily puzzled by a Baltimore Sun headline —
Structure collapses dot city, region
— until he realized that collapses is a noun and dot a verb in this context.
Far more reprehensible, however, is today’s
Purrr-sonal finance
about the costs of owning a pet.
Were I still wielding the rubber chicken of authority, someone would smart for this: an ancient, labored pun requiring punctuation to nudge the reader in the ribs.
Of course, there is also CNN’s Ceremony marks Hariri’s 2005 death. Someone in Atlanta apparently missed English class on the day that “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once” was taught.
On Friday, HeadsUp saw a Fox News headline, Iowa High School Football Coach Murder Trial Starts, and asked, reasonably, “Who did what to whom?”
The newspaper convention of using a comma in place of and comes a cropper in a Dayton Daily News headline noted at TestyCopyEditors.com: Man shot in chest, leg knocks on door for help.
None of these, however, rise to the level of embarrassment last Monday in Norfolk when the Virginian-Pilot reversed the score of the Superbowl on the front page of the sports section. AOL News quoted the paper’s managing editor, Maria Carrillo, as saying, “It’s just one of those things. We went over every aspect of that story a dozen times. Everything but the score.”
Not that AOL News has a lot to brag about with its own sports headlines, having given us Bledsoe Breathes Life Into Kentucky. I thought that chest compressions were now the preferred method of resuscitation.
Several of you pointed out the typo in the first specimen, got for dot. Now fixed. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteA person whose identity I shall shield speculates that the "Purrr-sonal finance" monstrosity was a modular item dispatched to The Sun from Chicago, which would put the miscreant well beyond the reach of my rubber chicken, though perhaps not the miscreant who decided to use it.
ReplyDeletei had to read this Romenesko headline today a couple times before i understood it for the same verb/noun confusion reason:
ReplyDeleteNewspaper ad inserts face intense digital competition
If a hand can crawl across the floor and play the piano (see the wonderful film with Peter Lorre), a leg can knock on a door. Don't underestimate the power of the independent limb.
ReplyDeleteHow's this for tasteless:
ReplyDeleteOver on the "E&P in Exile" blog, a story about a cut in funding for Virginia Tech's paper The Collegiate Times, which covered the 2007 campus shootings, is titled "Shooting Star Dimmed." (http://eandpinexile.blogspot.com/2010/02/shooting-star-dimmed.html)
Shame on you, Mr. Strupp.
My favorite was "Halifax Moves to Avoid Firemen's Strike." Where to? I thought.
ReplyDelete