Those who do not learn from the headline mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.
A reader forwards this Denver Post headline:
Bar as a noun meaning a saloon is widely recognized. But it is also a verb much favored in headlinese meaning “prohibit.”
The same ambiguity crops up in a classic headline collected in one of the Columbia Journalism Review’s features of defective headlines:
Minneapolis bars putting leaves in street
The errors of the past repay study.
I've noticed this a lot, too, and always wonder why they don't just use "bans" instead.
ReplyDeleteThe story about the North African who prohibited saloons:
ReplyDeleteBerber bars bars.
The bar is also a fish, which was my first reading of this!
ReplyDeleteI read the first "bar" as saloon and didn't even consider the other meaning. Maybe I need to bar myself from bars.
ReplyDeleteBars is also how I pronounce "bears," so just imagine my confusion.
ReplyDelete