You must be reading some different version of the Post than I, because I haven’t seen it. Admittedly, I only read the front page headlines, because I would not be caught dead actually purchasing and opening something so base and common as the Post.
But let’s take a sampling of headlines from their website:
**
CATHOLIC PARISHES SHUT DOWN
REVEALED: LINDSAY’S LUSH REHAB
N.M. GOV TO RUN FOR PREZ.
SHAWN’S STORY OF HOPE
**
And here are a few from the Daily Snooze:
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COP WIDOW’S WORDS BRING JURY TO TEARS
NY LEADING WAY IN CANCER FIGHT
MIKE: WHY ZAP POOR CON-ED?
**
None of these conform to the grammatical bizarrity of the OP’s example.
The only one that might be a bit obscure is the last one from the Snooze, which you’d only understand if you knew that NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been defending the electricity company (Consolidated Edison) for their mediocre response to last year’s nine-day blackout in Queens.
So tabloid headlines certainly use a great deal of puns, abbreviations and local references, but nothing so bizarre as the examples in the OP. At least, not that I’ve seen.
Ellis, you weren’t the first, Polycarp said the same thing in post 2, but this was contradicted by both my brief visit to the NYDN website as well as by friedo. This means I can give the editor the benefit of the doubt, but I’d still like to see for myself real life examples of US headlines written in that way, to ascertain if they are really as ungrammatical as my colleague’s. Here are a couple more examples from “my” site, which still haven’t been corrected.
Says Police chief is mistaken in Assistant DA’s killing Reveal names, companies, in major Customs smuggling
The Police chief one is even more outlandish than any of the others.
I completely disagree. I occassionally read NY tabloids on line for fun (they are a good read) and have never ever seen such mangled grammar as in the OP. Show us an example and we’ll believe you. I’m willing to bet good money that no such construction has ever appeared in the NY tabloids, except possibly in error.
Martha, who makes copyediting policy at the website you’re working at? Or is there no policy there, so they just let everyone write what they feel like? If you make policy, then tell everyone that starting headlines with a verb with an understood subject isn’t allowed. It doesn’t seem to be done anywhere in the English-speaking world except maybe at a couple of New York tabloids (and there’s some dispute about even that). If you have input to the policy, tell them that that’s what you recommend. Don’t most newspapers have copyediting policies that tell writers what level of informality is acceptable and what style will be used in news articles and headlines?
The headlines are the least of it. When you get to the actual article text, it’s enough to make the eyes bleed.
I’ve said all this to the editor, as well as to the owner, and their attitude is - “yes, we know - but it’s not a priority”. They said they would pay me to do the copy-editing if they had more funds, but even so the editor doesn’t really like the idea because it would complicate the process which, as you guessed, involves three or four writers doing their thing (using Babelfish in some cases, see the thread I linked to in an earlier post) and putting it up willy nilly.
What they should do is drop one contributor and use that money to pay for someone to do proofreading. (Even better would be to drop all contributors and hire three or four people who actually know how to write in English!) A little less content would not be so bad if it is better quality content. I’ve been as outspoken as I feel is possible, going as far as to say that most English speakers will be put off by such poor writing, but as none of them are native English speakers, they can’t realise just how bad it is. The fact that even after me pointing out the particular error that I highlighted in this thread, two items are still up with headlines like this shows what I’m up against.
They do get some reader feedback apparently, in fact that’s how I ended up covering the weekend content. Every writer needs an editor, and I feel a little uneasy about writing and posting articles without another pair of eyes looking over my work.
It could be that the editor feels somewhat rattled by someone who is rocking his cozy little boat? I’ll have to re-emphasise that I’m not interested in a full time office job but that I’m happy to do stuff from home at all hours.
The practice of omiting the subject from a headline used to be much more common (newspapers have their fads, too). I figure most editors got away from it for the reason folks in this thread object to it: it reads weird.
It’s worthwhile to reiterate RealityChuck’s comments about space limitations, since that is what drives the “oddball” constructions found in heads. (But some papers seem to be getting sloppy about making headlines “count out”; i.e. fill the available space. Course, using 60- or 72-point type for multi-line one-column heads virtually guarantees the right edge will be very ragged; mebbe they should go back to center-justifying such headlines.)
I can attest to the existence of these odd headline constructions. I remember coming across examples last year in a book on the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. The book had photos of several Chicago newspapers of the period, several of which used the strange imperative. I wrote to a word forum concerning it because it was the first time I’d ever seen such a usage. There I was informed that this was a common usage in the past, although rarer now.
OK, I suppose I didn’t limit the search to modern newspapers, but those examples are from over a half-century ago. This is not standard headlining practice anywhere now.
I think I may see where I inadvertently led Martha astray: The subjectless active-vocie headlines were the construction used by a number of tabloids, including the two survivors, some years back. I remember seeing them in the 1960s, when my relatives got the Daily News and the old Daily Mirror. Whether they are common today (apparently not) is something a Bigappelitarian would have to speak to.
No doubt, we are talking about a practice that is old-fashioned, passe, and frowned upon, but I swear it isn’t dead. I’ve only been reading the NYC papers since the 1990s and I see it regularly. Maybe it’s rare on the front page nowadays, but in the back pages, where space is tight between the ads, NAB 5 IN HEIST or BUST LOTTO SCAM may still appear. “Common”? It depends… is once a week common? I found those 50 year-old citations with a cursory, haphazard search. If anyone wants to sign up to access the New York Post archive on-line I guarantee more recent examples.
I disagree completely. Headlines in U.S. newspapers are highly convention-driven, and the examples in OP are clearly marked (as counter-conventional). I’d list the conventions, but I’ve got to go now; but all you have to do is open a copy of the Times to see. Okay, well, let’s see…
I suppose I may be wrong. It’s a good thing I’m not a betting man. Although it’s not yet been shown this has been used in modern day headlines, I do believe that you have seen them. What I don’t understand is why anyone would write a headline like that these days, being that they are seen as very awkward, and that they can easily be rewritten (e.g. BUST LOTTO SCAM = LOTTO SCAM BUSTED.) Especially with modern typesetting, headline writing is a bit more flexible. Two extra letters is not going to throw a headline off.
You can search recent articles for free. You do need a search term, though. I used “the,” and it gave me 2,916. I read through 256 of them until coming across this:
I still can’t figure out what that headline means, but I think it fits the OP’s grammar. I think. Perhaps somebody can translate that for me.
No, it won’t – when you have computerized typesetting (actually producing a photoffset master) and can go with 32.5-point type. But in the day when they actually set type, your headline needed to fit, and to be one of a few specific point sizes, the bigger the better.
When I did my stint on a copy desk, that’s exactly how we got headlines. We were basically given a count of how many lines and a point count (I’m not exactly sure whether it was called a point count or something else). Our little green screened terminals (anybody remember the names of these?) would give you a count, and IIRC, our headlines would have to be with ±2 of the specified count.
OK, now I’m satisfied that this wasn’t a product of the editor’s fevered imagination. Thanks for taking the time to come up with these examples, pulykamell and Ellis, and thanks for the clarification, Polycarp.
Although it’s not yet been shown this has been used in modern day headlines, I do believe that you have seen them. What I don’t understand is why anyone would write a headline like that these days, being that they are seen as very awkward, and that they can easily be rewritten (e.g. BUST LOTTO SCAM = LOTTO SCAM BUSTED.) Especially with modern typesetting, headline writing is a bit more flexible. Two extra letters is not going to throw a headline off.