Headlinese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese

by missosoup • 6 years ago

45 9 6 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

In the clickbait era, I've also noticed everything amped to 11. One no longer "disagrees", one "slams". One no longer "loses", one "gets destroyed", etc.

Not a fan.

rglover• 6 years ago

"downerending destroys missosoup on HN over Headlinese spat."

smcl• 6 years ago

I think there's a similar effect in play to 1984's "Newspeak". While Newspeak was designed to restrict freedom of expression and quell any nascent revolutionary feeling, Headlinese seems to lend itself perfectly to these intensely polarised feelings. I don't think it's a new thing though, it's certainly been employed by the British press for as long as I can remember.

And the constraint does lend itself to some fun creativity in the sports pages at least, see "Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic Are Atrocious"[1] and "Young Boys Wankdorf erection relief"[2] for example.

1: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/554447/where...

2: http://m.espn.com/soccer/story?storyId=337901&src=desktop

adriantam• 6 years ago

Same in git commit message, we need to put as much information as possible in the fewest number of bytes to make it useful. I am looking forward to an article name "committese"

gpantazes• 6 years ago

I use these 7 git commit message style rules [1] to establish my foundation of "committese". Things like "Use the imperative mood in the subject line" give commit messages a succint, consistent style.

Everything after that is finesse, personal effort, and ability to express things succinctly (much like the personalized "headlinese" styles mentioned).

[1] https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

kenforthewin• 6 years ago

I don't mind longer, multi-line git commit messages. I find shorthand in commit messages annoying.

tcgv• 6 years ago

Interesting. Now I know why, as a non native english speaker, I sometimes get confused after reading english language online newspaper headlines.

KineticLensman• 6 years ago

My favourite example was "Foot heads arms body" which was allegedly created although not perhaps used by the Times when the UK politician Michael Foot was put in charge of a disarmament committee [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot

[Edit: emphasised the ambiguity picked up Confiks]

Confiks• 6 years ago

However, Wikipedia suggests [1] (the primary source is unreachable for me) that "the headline does not, however, appear in The Times Digital Archive, which includes every day's newspaper from 1785 into the 21st century. It is found in a letter published in The Guardian in 1978. [2]"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot#In_popular_cultur...

[2] https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39001580/foot_heads_arms_bod...

Headlinese

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