One year ago today, somewhere in the Phillipines, a reporter checked his web logs and wondered where all the new readers were coming from. Today we celebrate the first anniversary of one of the most unfortunately worded headlines in the history of journalism.
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=] hrmmm. one wonders how you found this page. ;] one also wonders about his choice of verbs.
This one has syntactic and synonym confusion, if that is the right way to put it. My favorite headlines are “Gay sex splits bishops”, refering to an eclesiastical conference, and the earlier WWII “Eighth army push bottles up German rear”, possibly apocryphal, but fun anyway. (I wonder if I will see the “your comment is awaiting moderation” box?)
There’s even a word for these headlines–crash blossoms. http://nyti.ms/bw6tR4
The linguistics blog Language Log often has posts about crash blossoms.
Nice!
Personally my favorites are “Prostitutes Appeal to Pope” and “British left waffles on Falkland Islands.” But this is a new challenger.
Perhaps you have not heard of the Nigerian Russian oil and gas company…http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8130334.stm
My favorite, from Leno: “Portable Toilet Bombed – Police Have Nothing to Go On”
“Bus On Fire — Passengers Alight”
I read exactly six words and an acronym before cracking up at this post… oh yea and unfortunate is not the adjective for that title, we are all very lucky that this guy never took psychology.
There was a great one from a while back about speculators shorting the Vietnamese dong. Can’t seem to find it now, though…