Read the headline. What’s your immediate impression of what occurred?
[SPOILER]I clicked on the story to find out why a cop was using a pellet gun. 
Was he off duty? Is NY experimenting with nonlethal weapons?
I find the report very misleading.
BTW, he shot AT the teen 16 times. The teen wasn’t shot 16 times. [/SPOILER]
It’s certainly not as clear as it could be, although i think it’s fairly clear who had the pellet gun. My problem is the “16 times,” which could be read to be the number of times the kid held the pellet gun. (Yes, it doesn’t make sense. That’s the problem.)
I would have written it: “NYPD cop who fired 16 shots at Brooklyn teen holding a pellet gun to stand trial for the 2013 incident.”
It is a bad headline and I read it the same way you did at first pass. I wouldn’t have thought anymore about it if I didn’t know what a pellet gun was and why it would be ridiculous for a cop to be using one. That would be cruel, pointless and painful but probably not very deadly.
Although it was not the clearest headline ever, I interpreted it correctly since “held 16 times” has no meaning.
It’s ambiguous, but if you know what a pellet gun is you can easily figure out the meaning.
My first thought is why did he hold the pellet gun 16 times. Like he kept putting it down and picking it back up?
It’s the kind of story I’m not going to read because is somebody is too stupid to write a coherent headline then they are probably too stupid to have their facts right.
There’s someone who never had to diagram a sentence.
I didn’t find it misleading or unclear, just a bit clunky. If you trim it down to this:
NYPD cop who shot at Brooklyn teen 16 times to stand trial…
…I wouldn’t expect it to be in any way confusing.
Then add in the modifying phrase and it tells a bit more about the Brooklyn teen. Using parentheses would make it less tricky to follow.
NYPD cop who shot at Brooklyn teen (holding a pellet gun) 16 times to stand trial…
Using a few more words makes it quite clear, but of course headline writers avoid that like the plague.
**NYPD cop who shot at Brooklyn teen (who was holding a pellet gun) 16 times to stand trial…
The following is no longer than the original but much clearer, in my view:
NYPD cop who shot at pellet-gun-wielding Brooklyn teen 16 times to stand trial…
It’s a clumsily written headline.
The real problem is that the headline and virtually all of the story make it seem like the officer is being tried on criminal charges, while the last line of the story refers to it as an “ongoing civil case”.
NYPD cop to stand trial for shooting pellet-gun-wielding teen 16 times
It has too many pieces. I parsed it correctly the first time, but was probably predisposed to read more carefully by the fact that the OP asked if it seemed misleading.
The intent of the headline is inherently hard to describe, because it includes two examples of the same sort of thing (shooting/gun) It would be similarly hard to clearly describe an activity that comprises, say, disposal of waste receptacles, or breakdown recovery of breakdown recovery trucks.
“16 times” is an adverbial phrase which is intended to modify the verb “shot”, but there’s just too much material inserted bewteen the verby and the modifying phrase for this to be immediately and easily clear.
The solution is to put the adverbial phrase closer to the verb it modifies: “NYPD cop who shot 16 times [or “fired 16 shots”] at Brooklyn teen holding a pellet gun to stand trial for the 2013 incident”.
I’d also be tempted to leave out “for the 2013 incident”. It’s not wrong, either gramatically or factually, but I think the subeditor is trying to cram more detail into the headline than is optimal. Do we really need to know, before we read the story, that the incident occurred in 2013?
without reading any other responses.
There was a teen holding a bb gun; cop shot at him 16 times. Cop is to stand trial.
I’ll go back now and read the rest
The only ambiguity I saw was the “holding the pellet gun 16 times” one, which is quickly resolved by the fact that holding the gun 16 times doesn’t make sense. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder who was holding the pellet gun, perhaps because a similar incident was in the news quite recently.
What Chronos says - clunky but not confusing. The kid was holding a pellet gun, and the cop shot at him 16 times.
Regards,
Shodan
I read it correctly immediately. I’ve never seen “holding a XXX” to describe what weapon was being used. Now had it been “shot at teen with pellet gun” I would have chuckled as the pedant I am and then berated myself for being insensitive.
Did they change the headline since this morning? Several of you mention “holding” and that word isn’t in it.
Uh, yes it does:
“NYPD cop who shot at Brooklyn teen holding a pellet gun 16 times to stand trial for the 2013 incident”
Yes, it’s a very bad headline, trying to be its own subheader.
It didn’t though. The headline was shorter and just said in a different font “NYPD Cop to Face Jury for Shooting Teen with Pellet Gun 16 times” … which is what the article saves as/says when you hover over it as a tab. It indicates that the article has been edited too.