Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The random language of headlines

Same question as yesterday, sorta: What's the first way you read the hed?

I did all right with the "2 urged" and the colon, but I really stumbled on "bar band," for which I have an already accessible meaning. Amazing how opaque an headline can get when we have too much faith that the civilians will read it the same way we do.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Ed Latham said...

I was fine with 'bar' as a verb (they'd be a 'pub band' over here), but I struggled a bit with 'urged'. To my mind, those who are 'urged' are urged by others to act: 'Prime minister urged to see sense over policy'. But it seems that in this case it's the '2' who are actually doing the urging.

Under most circumstances, I'd have expected that in the present tense: '2 urge'. But I see that this is a kind of 'historical discovery' story ('It now emerges that FAMU were warned last fall'...etc), which explains the past tense, and maybe the strapline would have been enough to tip me off if I'd been familiar with the story. This was another one where I had to read the story to understand the headline though.

2:43 AM, June 13, 2012  
Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

I could handle "bar" as the verb, though I also read "2 urged" as standard headline passive. My real problem was "bar from Noun", which I don't have readily accessible, so I read it as "band from" and figured someone wanted the Classic band barred participating in 2, whatever that was...

btw: your capcha needs to know that the numeral 8 is not a "word"

9:41 PM, June 15, 2012  

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