becomes
THE RACE TO FIND THE SECRET OF LIFE
Feature heads, like news heads, are better when they have a specific element; where, when they are labels, they use key words. Just one piece of colour from the text will do. ‘The deal in Chicago’ is less vivid than ‘The deal in Room 410’.
Specialised Pages
All the injunctions for active news headlines apply to sports and business headings. Business people prefer restrained treatment of business news and they should have it. But confidence in the financial pages is not a matter of avoiding verbs and simple words. It is a matter of tone, moderation and simple accuracy. Business shares with sport one special headline requirement: names. The names of the companies and the names of their leaders are the essential signal. Shun the more general headings such as ‘Pieman and the baker in merger talks’ and write simple active specific headlines:
ASDA KINGFISHER MERGER FEES TO HIT £72M
BOWKETT QUITS AS BERISFORD PROFITS LEAP
OPPOSITION TO COKE DEAL HITS CADBURY
Similarly with sports headings the names of teams, players, managers, horses and jockeys are essential headline material. Sport is vigorous and the headline should be vigorous. The point you select for the head will depend on whether you are headlining a rush evening sports special, or a morning or Sunday sports page. With the first, you can safely assume that the head should concentrate on the result of the game, since the readers will primarily be buying the paper for that. In the second instance, with the results having been broadcast several hours before, the sports readers should be given headlines which concentrate on a feature of the game, leaving the result to be implied:
PRIDE NOT ENOUGH TO LIFT SAD FOREST
HIGH-SPEED SCOTS RUN RIOT
The best way to avoid clichés in sports headings is always to select an outstanding incident or player, rather than a generality.
Headlinese
The words individually are harmless enough, but in certain combinations there is a mutation which twists the headline horribly, and produces headlinese. Readers who expose their gaze to it are not exactly turned to stone, but there is a distinct glazing of the eyes and a buzzing sensation between the ears. Try this example:
SKYSCRAPERS PROBE HUSTLE
or:
HOMES PLAN FACTORY HOPE
We will come back to these in a moment. Even for them there is a diagnosis and a cure. The road to recovery begins by recognising the fundamental reasons for headlinese: compression plus haste. Headline writers have no malevolence for the readers they are about to assault; they do it because, as Theodore Bernstein put it, they have a desperate need to fit size 7 ideas into size 2 spaces.15 So absorbed are headline writers in this, so preoccupied are they with extracting its essence in half a dozen words, so deep does every detail impress itself as they search the copy again for the unique combination of headline words, so familiar with the facts do they become, in short, that the headline they write does not mean a thing. What they should do when they emerge clutching the six words of truth is lay them aside for a moment, pause, and try to read them as if they were a reader the next day who, with a train to catch and mind preoccupied by an overdraft, comes across them for the first time.
If headline writers did this, few of the choicer varieties of headlinese would survive with their ambiguities and gobble-degook. Even the slightest doubt in the headline writer’s mind should suffice to consign that headline to oblivion. But doubt should be reinforced by diagnosis and, as a warning to others who pass this way, the main inspirations of headlinese will be set out here.
The Seven Deadly Sins
There are ways of dealing with them if you know what they are: careless use of nouns as adjectives; the creation of the plural adjective, hitherto unknown to the English language; excessive omission of words; abuse of headline catchwords; extravagant metaphor; confusion of tenses; and clumsy construction. To these seven sins can be added another vice – slang, which can be dealt with summarily. It passes in a light heading when the slang is indeed common parlance and is one splash of vulgar procession of subject, verb and predicate. It fails when slang is piled on slang as in the classic American newspaper announcement that Professor William Craigie was joining the University of Chicago to direct the compilation of the Dictionary of American English:
MIDWAY SIGNS LIMEY PROF TO DOPE YANK TALK
Nouns and verbs
The most serious begetter of headlinese is unquestionably the abuse of the noun as an adjective. I approve of calling the man who has had a heart transplant ‘heart man’ in the headline, letting the noun ‘heart’ do the work of an adjective and identify the man. This is clear enough. The trouble comes when the word which is used as an adjective can also represent a verb. There are any number of words which can be either noun or verb according to sentence structure, whose role is revealed only by other words in the sentence. When these other words are omitted to form the compact headline sentence, the key word may become ambiguous. The first defence against headlinese then must be to have an early warning system which cautions headline writers as they deploy the noun-verb words as adjectives. In the headline vocabulary these are conspicuous:
tax, ban, plan, drive, move, probe, protest, bar, share, watch, cut, axe, ring, bank, rises, state, pay, pledge, talks, riot, attack, appeal, back, face, sign, jump, drug
It is the confusion of noun and verb which makes us stumble at this one:
POLICE STATE TAUNT BY HOGG IN ROW ON SEIZED PASSPORT
‘Police state’ we read here as subject and verb. So they gave evidence did they, about a taunt made by Hogg? No. The story tells us that during the row about a seized passport Mr Hogg accused the Government of setting up a police state. It is Mr Hogg who is using the word state and using it as a noun in the position of an adjective. He is quite entitled to do that because in his sentence the position of the words ‘a police state’ and the retention of the word ‘a’ make it clear that ‘state’ is being used as a noun and ‘police’ is a noun being used adjectivally to qualify the noun ‘state’.
The headline writer cannot use Mr Hogg’s ‘police state’ unless there is a clear indication of what it means: and there are ways of doing this even within the limited space of a headline. First, the headline could hyphenate police-state to indicate that it is a compound and not noun and verb. Or secondly, and preferably, the words should be enclosed in quotes:
‘POLICE STATE’ TAUNT BY HOGG IN ROW ON SEIZED PASSPORT
Very many of the wildest headlines, created by the confusion of noun and verb, can be tamed if headline writers recognise the beast as double-headed. Armed only with a hyphen or quotes they can bring the troublesome words to useful service, though some examples are so ferocious they have to be put down altogether.
PUNJABI WHO RUNS STREET PROTESTS
And so do all of us. The headline is supposed to indicate an article about a Punjabi who organises protests in the streets. Street is being used as an adjective. Hyphenating street-protests might just rescue this one.
‘SPEED PROBE NEED URGENT’
It is not a call to speed a probe. It is a call to hasten an inquiry into speeding in a town. The two initial nouns as adjectives with a third which could be a verb take some digesting; quick work might just about produce a survivor, coupling speed-probe and leaving the quotes for the one word which needs them:
SPEED-PROBE NEED ‘URGENT’
NIGERIAN TALKS IN LONDON
Did they grill him hard? ‘Talks on Nigeria in London’ would fit. (If tight, you might just get away with ‘Nigeria talks in London’.)
DISASTER PLANNING THE EUROPEAN WAY
One asks: ‘is it a disaster planning the European way?’ But the article does not tell us. It is about the way the European Civil Defence plans for disaster in nuclear war. Disaster, you will have guessed, is a noun used as an adjective. Rather than create a hyphenated monster heading it should be written simply: Planning for disaster in Europe.
; Plural adjectives
The English language does not recognise a plural adjective. We never say ‘Ten beautifuls women’ or ‘Plums tart’. Absurd headlines like ‘Skyscrapers probe hustle’ are produced when we use a noun as an adjective – and then put the adjective into the plural. Here is another:
WHITE LINES EXPERIMENT ON ROADS
Very irresponsible of them. ‘White lines’ is being used adjectivally to describe the kind of experiment (just as ‘skyscrapers’ is being used to describe the kind of ‘probe’). All such must be singular. ‘White-line experiment on roads’ is intelligible and not ludicrously ambiguous. And, of course, we understand there is more than one white line, just as we understand there is more than one road in road safety. Putting the noun being used as an adjective into the correct singular prevents many a nonsense, but sometimes this is only one fault. The most grotesque headline occurs when in addition to a plural adjective we have to cope with not one but three nouns as adjectives.
NUCLEAR PLANT DAMAGES PROBE BY POLICE
can be swiftly treated for its painful pluralisation:
NUCLEAR PLANT DAMAGE PROBE BY POLICE
This inactive headline with three initial nouns to describe the probe is best recast positively
POLICE PROBE NUCLEAR PLANT DAMAGE
When we are using a word in an unusual way the onus is on us to make sure the reader is with us all the way.
BEXLEY SCHOOLS BAR ROW SPREADS
The bar rows most people know about are not very pleasant. Is this an instance of alcohol being smuggled into the teachers’ room? No, it is a decision to refuse to admit children to two schools – to bar their entry. ‘Entry row’ would have made some sense. And again:
PRODUCTION OVER MINE SAFETY, CLAIMS INSPECTOR
does not mean that output is over the level needed to keep the mine open. ‘Over’ here means ‘put first’: Pit output put before mine safety, says inspector.
Excessive omission
You read the text, you chisel out an acceptable headline, then it fails to fit by a few characters. This is the moment of temptation. If you omit just that one word, it still makes sense, doesn’t it? A good test for excessive omission is to see if there is a chink in the wording where you can reasonably insert alternative pronouns or prepositions and change the meaning:
SIGNALS AT RED, SAID NOTHING
The omission is between the ‘red’ and ‘said’, and what might we legitimately imagine in there? ‘They’ said nothing? ‘He’ said nothing? ‘I’ said nothing? ‘We’ said nothing? ‘Police’ said nothing? ‘Archbishop’ said nothing? I suspect that what was originally written was:
‘SIGNALS AT RED, I SAID NOTHING’
The text is that a fireman of a train which collided with another told the inquiry that after the train had begun to move he saw a signal gantry with all the signals at red – but he did not say anything to the driver about it. This admission is worth the headline, but the subject of the sentence cannot be omitted. Instead of trying to cope with the exact quotes here, the headline could have been:
RAILMAN SAW DANGER, SAID NOTHING
Two more with the missing word supplied (in brackets):
ST PAUL’S TRIBUTE TO LUTHER KING (CATHEDRAL)
VIETCONG FLAGS OVER SAIGON (FLY)
Abuse of catchwords
The ugliest headlines give the impression that a handful of words thought to be powerful in headlines have been taken at random without any attempt to create an intelligible headline sentence. Words like shock, ordeal, pledge, probe, are potent symbols, but like soup concentrates they need water. They cannot be served altogether and raw:
TRAIN RUSH HOUR SMASH ORDEAL
CAR PLEDGE MOVE HIT
In this category we must analyse our opening shocker
HOMES PLAN FACTORY HOPE
We have a noun–adjective double. Homes plan, which means a plan to accept industrialised housing in a new town; and a factory hope, which means there may be an industrialised housing factory. All these words are acceptable if used in a less constipated context. In addition, we have excessive omission. If we could insert a verb to separate the two sections of the headline we might just make sense:
HOMES PLAN RAISES FACTORY HOPES
But the truth is that this headline is guilty of a further offence: two thoughts in four words. Headlinese is best avoided here by settling for the main news thought. So, too, with this monster created by coupling five nouns together:
CORNED BEEF ON ‘SECRET’ SALE STORM
This was also an instance of too much in the headline and of the headline overtaking itself. The news was:
‘TYPHOID’ CORNED BEEF IN SHOPS AFTER ALL
Extravagant metaphor
Escalation robs headlines of authority. People who are worried about through traffic find they are living in ‘terror road’; a mild disagreement becomes a storm; and anyone who makes a criticism is in danger of being pictured in the most ferocious posture:
BISHOP FLAYS MODERN GIRL
DIRECTOR SLASHES SEATS
TEACHER LASHES MEALS ISSUE
Related to this source of headlinese is the escalation of metaphor until it loses touch with reality.
KLONDIKE RUSH FOR WHITE GOLD
‘White gold’ is a metaphor here for uranium. And the rush is not in the Klondike. It would be all right to say:
‘KLONDIKE’ RUSH FOR URANIUM
This use of the metaphor would give an image of frenzy similar to the gold rush in the Klondike, and losing the ‘white gold’ metaphor hardens the headline without emasculating it. What happened was that the headline writer built on a good idea but left the reader behind.
Confusion of tenses
We use the present tense in heads for contemporaneous events; but we cannot retain the present tense throughout when there is a clear time-change built into the headline:
CID SUSPECT ARSON AFTER BABIES SAFE
I do not agree with the view that when a past time element appears in the head the only thing to do is use a verb in the past tense. That would produce ‘CID suspected arson after babies saved’, as though they no longer suspect arson. What we should do is recognise that in this clumsily constructed head, the word ‘after’ enforces past tense on what follows: ‘CID suspect arson after babies saved’. We could avoid the past tense: ‘CID suspect arson after baby rescue’. But it is also better to avoid the ‘after’ construction. This would fit:
BABIES SAVED IN FIRE: CID SUSPECT ARSON
Clumsy construction
To make heads fit their space there is some juggling you can do with word order without sacrificing meaning. But a halt must be called when the word shuffling produces heads such as
LONDON MODEL IS STRANGLING VICTIM WITH CITY MAN
The news can and should be expressed in normal sequence:
LONDON MODEL AND CITY MAN FOUND STRANGLED
or
LONDON MODEL FOUND STRANGLED WITH CITY MAN
And again:
TENANT HIT RAIDER WITH BOTTLE ON HEAD
Who bottle on head had?
CHAPTER NINE
Headline Vocabulary
Everyone must, for the most part, be his own analyst; and no one who does not expend, whether expressly and systematically or as a half-conscious accompaniment of his reading and writing, a good deal of care upon points of synonym is likely to write well.
H. W. FOWLER
Headline writers must have an armoury of synonyms. ‘Can you think of another word for “requisition”?’ Pleas like that are common as text editors try to avoid the long words and the abstractions which kill headlines. Practice in headline writing enforces acquaintance with a wide order of synonyms. Text editors will be their own analysts: in half a dozen synonyms only one may be quite right for the idea to be expressed.
For writing and editing there are a few useful dictionaries of synonyms; Roget’s rich Thesaurus is especially valuable once its method of presentation is mastered. For headline writing, however, a different
kind of vocabulary is useful – a list of words which commonly give difficulty in headline writing with headline alternatives. These must be shorter and, preferably, more specific. It is these that headline writers need to store in their minds, and which the following vocabulary attempts to supply.
The main headings throughout are the nouns, verbs and adjectives which give most trouble, followed by shorter alternatives. With the troublesome abstract nouns listed it is often better to change the headline thought so it can be expressed with a verb. The list is not a list of synonyms. It is a list of headline ideas. Some of the alternative words suggested will not fit the shade of meaning in every case, and the text editor must judge.
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