**Arrest three men at airport **(meaning “Three men arrested at airport”)
**Discover new species of snake **(meaning “New snake species discovered”)
I know that writers are told to avoid the passive voice as much as possible, but isn’t the former construction in each of the two examples just plain wrong?
I made this observation about some headlines written like this and the person responsible said it was a US-style construction, commonly used in US tabloid headlines. He implied that because I speak and write British English it was simply a case of different conventions.
I think he is BSing me to avoid admitting that his written English leaves a lot to be desired.
In case I’m being too cocky here, please tell me - is this, or was this ever an accepted headline writing convention in the US press?
In general, “a,” “an,” “the,” and the various forms of “to be” are regularly omitted. Clipped forms of names, etc., that are generally known are acceptable. Nouns modifying nouns are common. Honorifics are omitted. Past participles are SOP.
Mayor Blasts DPW Head is typical. City Braced for Record Snow is common. Eileen Headed for Texas is supposed to convey that the forecast track of Hurricane Eileen is expected to have it make landfall somewhere on the Texas coast. Queen to Visit Tahiti has nothing to do with Freddie Mercury’s old band, but deals with Elizabeth II’s state visit to Polynesian countries.
Only in New York City tabloids are the active-voice monstrosities of the OP common practice. Bernarr Macfadden was the pioneering spirit in the use of them, and the Daily News and Post seem to find them spiffy.
It’s hard to say that anything, other than a misspelling or typo, can ever be wrong in an American newspaper headline.
They are not conventional writing, either formal or informal, but more like advertisements for the contents of the article. They serve no function but to draw the eye and express the greatest sales value in the concisest space.
The classic New York tabloid headline of all time - Headless Body in Topless Bar - doesn’t even contain a verb. The implication is that the body was found in a sleazy bar having been decapitated, but even adding the found would reduce the eye-catching value of the shortened expression.
Headline writing is a genre unto itself and has rules unto itself. It can be done badly, and usually is. But “anything goes” is a good description of the core principle of the genre. Anything that makes you read the article. Anything.
These would all work as British newspaper headlines, with minor adjustments such as “heading” instead of “headed”. But I can’t see how “discover new species of snake” could be read as “a new species of snake has been discovered”, any way you slice it, in any mainstream variety of English.
Polycarp (sorry for not bolding your name in my previous post), I looked in the NYDN (the NYP was taking ages to load) and saw nothing comparable to the two examples in the OP. I know the basic conventions from years of exposure to the UK tabloid press and it wasn’t that different. They have their own compact, unambiguous logic.
My examples are imperative phrases, which confuses the meaning they aim to convey. The whole point of snappy, zappy, tabloidy headlines, as Exapno Mapcase points out, is to tell you what the story is about in as few words as possible. Ambiguity only gets in the way. Using the active voice in this way comes across like issuing orders to the readers, not informing them about a recent event.
Arrest three men at airport! Discover new species of snake!
I’d really like to see authentic examples using this construction.
At my paper, or at any paper I have edited I prefer the subject-verb-direct object form. the first would have read “Feds (or locals or cops or troopers) grab three at airport” depending on space. The other “BU (UCLA or ASU or CU or whatever a nearby university is) study finds new snakes”.
The only way I would allow one of the ones that you had was if we had a teaser head above it setting it up a bit more. Granted I have always edited broadsheets, but on the first one, I see no purpose for “men”. If one of my newseditors came up with the first one, I would ask him to redo it saying “who else does one arrest at an airport?” (yes, I know women) but that would be worth mentioning, not men. (OK, OK the new species of snake). I also find that “arrest” could be improved upon if there had been any sort of confrontation at all.
Regarding the snake headline, I would probably bury that story on the inside somewhere and I wouldn’t be too worried about that head, but I would want a local hook, if possible, and I would like that hook in the head. If there is a solid hook, I would definitely want it in the head.
Problem is, as Usram implied, “Arrest three men at airport” and “Three men arrested at airport” don’t mean the same thing at all. The latter describes a situation, while the former sounds like an order given to police or whatever to go and arrest the guys.
I’m not really sure what the point of your question is - you cite those two examples as something you’ve seen, and ask whether they’re “just plain wrong”.
Then, you say:
I thought you had already seen authentic examples, somewhere.
Personally, I have never seen a newspaper headline like that, and would be surprised if I did - they just don’t make sense.
“Police arrest three men at airport” and “Scientists discover new species of snake” are along the lines of what seems common.
Let me clarify. The examples in the OP are actual headlines taken from an English language news site I’m doing some work for, which is based in a Latin American country. Most of the writers are non-native English speakers. Here’s a thread I posted when I first made contact with them, which will give you an idea of their professional standards.
I’m not going to link directly to the site because of the possibility of them linking back to the thread. You could contact me via my profile, although there’s not much point now because the headlines in question have been corrected as a result of my comment to the editor. Also, I’m in charge of content over the weekend and there will be no such abominations on my watch.
The editor, who is not a native English speaker but has lived in the US, admitted that he had written these headlines, and justified the style by saying it was a US headline writing convention that I probably wasn’t familiar with, being a Brit and all that, while accepting that they were too tabloid-like for his esteemed organ.
The point of my question was, therefore, to find out whether there was indeed such a convention in the United States, or whether he was just engaging in a spot of posterior obfuscation.
Maybe the OP meant “how come pithy newspaper headlines are written in the passive voice, when the passive voice is considered bad style?”
And I’d WAG that the answer is that the passive voice is more concise.
“Three men arrested at airport” vs. “Police arrest three men at airport”. Either way, you must include “three men”, “arrest”, and “airport”. But with the active voice, you have to say who’s doing the arresting.
One point is this: headlines are severely constrained by space. Verbs are left out and other constructions used to conserve space.
“Arrest three men at airport” has two fewer characters than “Three men arrested at airport.” That can make a difference when fitting in the headline. Maybe the space was available, but the headline writer would rather keep it short as much as possible. But the extra “ed” in your version could have forced the headline to go onto a second line (bad) or required a reduction in typeface (bad for consistency).
In your second example (“Discover new species of snake”/“New snake species discovered”), your version is a tiny bit longer than the original. That’s because “of” counts 1 1/2 for headline spacing while “ed” counts as 2.* The spaces aren’t an issue since they can be adjusted. It’s possible that the extra 1/2 width for the character would have caused a problem with the headline.
*Characters are given values in proportional newspaper fonts, determined by their width.
I briefly worked on a copy desk, and the headlines you’ve showed would never be printed. I have never seen such a construction in any English newspaper, American or otherwise. They make no sense. “Arrested: Three Men at Airport” and “Discovered: New Species of Snake,” at least makes a modicum of sense, but still wouldn’t fly because it just looks and reads stupid. If you want to keep the same words and follow headline writing conventions, you can make the simple “Three Men at Airport Arrested” and “New Species of Snake Discovered,” which suffer only from being a bit boring.
TvTime’s suggestions are most likely how I would have written the headline. “Cops nab three in airport sting” or whatever the facts are, but something definitely punchier, sexier, and more sensical than “Arrest three men at airport.”
Yet everyone else is saying headlines like my samples would **never **be printed in a US publication. That’s why I want to see examples of the “active-voice monstrosities” Polycarp says are “common practice in the NY tabloids”, to see for myself if what the editor told me has any basis in reality.
BTW I have no problem with the passive voice. I try not to overuse it, but there are times, as has been demonstrated here, where it is the best option.
I, too, have never seen such a construction in a headline. The only unspoken headline convention that I can think of is that puns are inserted wherever possible. Especially the sports section (“Tide surge swamps Gators”)
Am I the first to say YES, I have absolutely seen that type of construction in many a headline, specifically in the New York Post and the New York Daily News. I am in fact very surprised that fellow-Brooklynite Friedo has never come across it. I have not lived everywhere across the country, but based on responses here we are dealing with a New York phenomenon exclusively, and probably only two newspapers at that.
Frankly I find it weird too. I always notice it because it is so awkward.
The main thing to stress is that the examples in the OP are completely within the realm of what you can expect to see in the NYC tabloids - sooner or later, though that isn’t the most common kind of phrasing you will see.
