The Fine Art of Headline Writing

One of those words has to be the verb -- it has to be. I just know it! If only we could tell which one.

They're Finding Me, I Swear

Honest, I'm not looking for typos and other flubs. In fact, in the last few weeks I've been consciously ignoring AOL News and Yahoo! News boo-boos that jump out at me.

But not 20 minutes after I posted that last bad call by Yahoo! News, I saw this Kanye headline.

It's "led," Yahoo. Unless, of course, Kanye had been drinking from a Roman aqueduct. Surely one of your editors would tell you that -- if only you'd staff enough of them to cover the workload there.

Online Service News Headline du Jour

Thanks, Yahoo! News, for letting us know that our president's review of a major war isn't an accident.

More Bad Wording from the World of Copy Editing and News Headline du Jour

I edited a rather problematic article the other day about a new music venue. It contained some good examples of the ways that wily words can mutiny. Here (disguised, as always) is one example:

“The Blues Room holds high stakes for its performers by having the reach of a global audience through onsite TV and radio production broadcasting facilities.”

One problem with this sentence is that the writer relied too heavily on a “by” phrase to introduce a lot of information. But MY biggest problem with this sentence is “the reach of a global audience.” Here, the writer just took a powder -- stopped paying attention to her own words.

What is “the reach of a global audience”? Sounds to me like the distance that audience can reach. That's not what she meant to say. She was talking not about the audience's ability to reach but the venue's ability to reach (an audience). So she should have written, “because it can reach a global audience” or something like that.

I see this type of thing a lot with novice feature writers. They let their words squirm out of their grasp and lose their meaning. This writer wanted to mention the venue’s “reach.” She had this word in her head as a noun and she just refused to abandon it even after it abandoned her.

* * * *

News headlines often crack me up. The dropping of "is" and other forms of "to be" along with the dropping of many articles and prepositions can sometimes dilute a headline to the point of meaninglessness. Add to that extreme space constraints headline writers face and you end up with stuff like this headline from yesterday's L.A. Times (with original line breaks intact).

'Hour of

Power'

Crux of

Schism

Ah, yes, the old "crux of schism" angle. What an attention-grabber.

Wait, it just got funnier. I searched the L.A. Times website for the article to link it here, and saw the same article with the headline, "Schullers' rift centers on 'Hour of Power.'" But that's not how it showed up in the print edition yesterday. I guess that proves the headline writer was actually competent and our "Crux of Schism" hed was truly the result of space constraints. I guess I should have titled this post:

Tight

Page

Space

Crux of

Stinker

Hed