This story is entitled, “Cops Shoot Wandering Bear With Jar Over Head.”
This sentence seems awkward to me and it sounds like they shot the bear with a jar which consequently ended up on its head. Is it grammatically correct? If not, what would be the clearest way to reword it?
Sorry for such a rudimentary question, but it’s been way too long since any English classes.
Cops Shot a Wandering Bear that had a Jar over its Head.
(I also changed to the past tense, since otherwise it makes an assertion about the habitual activities of police officers, rather than about a specific event. But headlines do use the present tense ike that all the time.)
Headlines must be terse, yet carry essential information. Headline writing is an art that, as the OP shows, is often not mastered.
For an entire book full of examples I heartily recommend the Columbia Journalism Review’s collection Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim.
What kunilou said. Headlines also have to fit a certain character count, which adds to the challenge.
I’d be inclined to go with something along the lines of “Cops Shoot Jar-Snared Bear.”
It’s something of a dangling prepositional phrase, as the reader can’t tell if the cops used a jar-gun to shoot over the bear’s head or if the cops shot a bear that had a jar on its head.
The difficulty comes, as freckafree and Kunilou mentioned, in that a headline writer has a very specific amount of space to fill and must do so in a way that entices the reader into the article.
Dead: Jar-Head Bear
I love writing headlines.
It’s both grammatically correct (for a newspaper headline) and unclear. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. 
But it’s not really that unclear. Most people with common knowledge would reject the more bizarre reading almost immediately.
-FrL-
Bear in Jar Shot by Cops
I find this version almost poetic.
Poor, poor Pooh. And all he wanted was some Hunny.
Cops Cap Jarred Bear
Thanks for the replies (and the laughs :D). Yeah, I knew exactly what they meant, but it was kind of grating to read.
The Variety version:
Jar Bear Fares Poor; Cops Stop
And here I was wondering how the officer managed to pull off the shot with a jar over his head.
Another suggestion:
Jar Bear 'Jinx Stopped by Force
[QUOTE=Lazlo]
This story is entitled, “Cops Shoot Wandering Bear With Jar Over Head.”
This sentence seems awkward to me and it sounds like they shot the bear with a jar which consequently ended up on its head. Is it grammatically correct? If not, what would be the clearest way to reword it?
Sorry for such a rudimentary question, but it’s been way too long since any English classes.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, it’s awkward, but the editor probably figured people could figure it out eventually. As someone else noted, writing headlines is not conducive to clear grammar.
If I (as a technical writer) were writing about this incident in one complete sentence, I would write:
Police shot a bear that they discovered wandering around with a jar over its head. Even though the part in italics is hard to parse, I think most native English readers would understand what I meant.
We should remember that our goal is clarity, not good grammar. Most of the time, good grammar leads to clarity.
High School journalism contests in Texas still include “Headline Writing”. A certain type of kid loves it.