Bad headline writing

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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Nanohedron »

Not my usual angle, but this...

"Man errantly invited to bachelor party is told: Come anyway!"

...shows why a copywriter should not only have a dictionary on hand, s/he should actually use it.

Normally I won't give anyone much grief over misuse of a word if time presses, but news writers? Please. That's supposed to be a better standard.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Nanohedron »

Heading an article on the British royal line of succession:

"An heir and a spare: life as a royal number two"

You can't help but wonder if that was intentional.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by an seanduine »

There is a long standing traditional tension between very junior copy writers (those assigned to writing the minor headlines, and sometimes the majors), and chief editors. The idea, it seems, is to slide whatever you can past the chief. A long time ago, in a distant Galaxy, I lived in a dorm that had a special bulletin board for questionable headlines (and pin-ups). I particularly remember the lede on page two that read :Marines Beat Off Viet Cong. :D

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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by jim stone »

A good headline, or better, caption. A female monkey escaped from the zoo in Philadelphia, I think it was.
She was scampering around the framework for the new waterworks. There was a photo of the monkey, peering down
from the scaffolding, and the caption: 'A Monkey Wench in the Works!'
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Nanohedron »

"11 Jaw-Dropping Scandals from the Turn of the Century"

...only the article was about scandals in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. If you catch my meaning.

The only explanation I have for this is that there are people still writing copy out there who are as old as me. :wink:
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by MTGuru »

I think "Turn of the Century" is usually meant as a calque of "fin de siècle". Which by default means especially the period surrounding 1 January 1901.

"Turn of the Millennium" gives a nice distinction, unless you're a medievalist. As for previous centuries, we all know they didn't so much turn as kind of ooze into one another. Things were a lot sloppier back then.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Brus »

MTGuru wrote: "Turn of the Millennium" gives a nice distinction, unless you're a medievalist. As for previous centuries, we all know they didn't so much turn as kind of ooze into one another. Things were a lot sloppier back then.
You mean, there was no Y1.9K panic? People then were so complacent!
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Podge »

The original headline for this article was not "Further jobs blow for Donegal"

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0830/66999-donegal/
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Nanohedron »

"Hot yoga founder ordered to pay in harassment lawsuit"

...Which tells us that looks are no excuse.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by JCortese »

I can't contribute a headline, but I still remember one of the best unintentionally hilarious spam subject lines I ever received -- and this was back in the mid 90s:

"Attract men with larger breasts!"

Don't most people who want to attract men prefer to attract men with no breasts at all? :-)

Ah, the charms of the garden-path sentence ...
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Dale »

One of my daughters, whose dry sense of humor you'd have to experience to appreciate, was checking her email once and said, "I keep thinking all of these spam emails are asking me if I want to refinance my penis."
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by s1m0n »

Dale wrote: "I keep thinking all of these spam emails are asking me if I want to refinance my penis."
Or at the very least, get an extension.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by pancelticpiper »

Not really bad headline writing, but just plain strange, is the headline I saw in a local paper when I was visiting my mom back in West Virginia:

BIG UGLY WOMAN KILLED IN CRASH

My mom didn't see the strangeness, because there's a place called Big Ugly nearby, named after Big Ugly Creek. (Presumably there's a Little Ugly Creek too.)

Here's a local sign

Image

Another oddity near there is a creek named West Fork in spite of the fact that it's actually the east fork. It was named for a man named West, not the direction, but nevertheless West Fork is often misidentified as East Fork on maps.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by Nanohedron »

"Sisters from Minnesota found dead in Caribbean hotel"

Apparently they moved the Seychelles.
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Re: Bad headline writing

Post by kkrell »

Not a headline at all, just a gripe. If you're a big survey company, presumably getting the big bucks from a major fast food vendor, surely your on-line survey shouldn't end with "Thank you for your time. Your repsonse has been recorded."
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