Consider the headline: a bunch of words carefully crafted to grab your attention when you least expect it… and then entice you to spread it far and wide, sometimes in spectacular viral fashion. And that’s just for starters. Before you even get to all the news that’s fit to print, the headline is already way ahead of you, with succinct and surprising spoilers—that can only really be understood if you click. By the time you read a headline, you may already have become incensed by provocative questions, been amused by puns and wordplay or have had your faith restored in humanity by viral clickbait.
In an online age where attention spans are worn thin by information overload, these are remarkable feats for a bunch of words, yet headlines get little respect around here. From titillating tabloid titles to clickbait chicanery, headlines these days have often been derided as the empty calories of information, sensationalist trickery, “the art of exaggerating without actually lying” as Otto Friedrich put it.
Why do we even pay so much attention to headlines, when millions are made up and forgotten every day? Some are more memorable than others (particularly when clever wordplay is involved), yet good or bad, there is a common language of headlines. Visual placement aside, there’s a long history to how humble copy editors have developed the weird linguistic tricks that intrigue, shock, and amuse an otherwise cynical audience. What you’ll learn may surprise you (or not).
From tabloids to broadsheets, there’s definitely a dubious art to composing effective headlines, whether the story is a jubilant (“VE-Day – It’s All Over,” “Men Walk on the Moon“), rather grim (“Beatle John Lennon Slain,” “Hitler Dead“) or unusual (“Radio Fake Scares Nation“). In “Headlines: The Unappreciated Art,” Lynn Ludlow shows how the headline, considered an American invention, has moved from relatively benign or literal news captions (“The CONTINUATION of our weekly Newes, from the 24 of February to the 2 of March“, from one of the first London newspapers in 1625) to large lettered, urgent, staccato headlines such as “IMPORTANT. Assassination of President Lincoln.” (New York Herald, 1865).By the end of the 19th century, editors had started playing around with the language of headlines, switching over to using the present tense in headlines, even for events past, and promoting verbs, making action seem more immediate and palpable. A headline like “FIRES GEN. M’ARTHUR,” (Chicago Tribune, 1951) fires on both of these cylinders, making the verb more prominent by removing the guy doing the firing altogether (a no name, no doubt), and making the action happen right NOW, as you’re reading it. Hurry and read, before the action ends!
Art form or not, short and sweet titles are often hard to figure out. Take a confusing example like “Dead Baby Names Racket,” which could be read a few ways, one much odder than the other (though who are we to question what dead babies like to name in their spare time?). It holds your attention because you read… and then have to reread. Short form headlines assume a lot of reader knowledge (who is Beatle John Lennon for instance?) to be understood, placing readers even closer to the news.
We can see that headlines certainly don’t use language the way we might expect but their weird telegraphic forms still seem to condense and convey all the necessary information to readers. Headlines are often better understood and appreciated once stories are read, yet their powers of attraction are very much hinged on readers being able to anticipate what the headlines are referring to and develop some kind of emotion with respect to a story they haven’t even read yet. Once readers are curious enough to be led down the garden path and click/read, the headlines have won. How do they do this?HT: The Browser
Linguist Deborah Schaffer shows that in lieu of real news or a respectable reputation, tabloids often make liberal use of “headlinese” to sensationalize stories. This means using an expressive, “connotation-rich” vocabulary that is attention-grabbing and promotes curiosity and a strong emotional connection for the reader, unsurprisingly, similar to advertising language, since “the average newspaper is simply a business enterprise that sells news and uses that lure to sell advertising space” (Otto Friedrich). Words like “sex,” “scandal,” “sizzling,” and “weird” can be used to sell anything, even if they’re unlikely stories like “Surgeon, 70, Makes 11 Nurses Pregnant,” “Marie Osmond puts her 5-yr-old son to work—and church is outraged,” “Lonely UFO Aliens Are Stealing Our Pets,” and “Michael J. Fox Outrages Hotel Guests During His Bizarre Island Honeymoon.” Readers are brought closer to the news in tabloid journalism, given a personal interest, asked to feel sympathy for the “heartbroken” in “tragic” circumstances, who may often be people we know intimately, on a first name or nickname basis—such as celebrities, our dear friends: “Test-Tube Baby for Burt & Loni: Friends Say It’s in the Works.”...MORE
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