Separated by a common headline

Two questions:

1) What's your first-glance reading of what the headline means?
2) Where are you from? (Specifically, where did you learn to read headlines?)

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Do you speak American?

Like it or not, the local treasure that is the Duke-Carolina rivalry* has gone national on us (which is one reason it's so often afflicted with Dick Vitale). But one doesn't have to speak a particular regional American dialect to wonder where CNN is phoning this one in from. The online hed might have been a giveaway, had you stumbled there first:

Amazon pirates are ruthless and all that, but I don't recall much transitive scuppering from my years of reading American sports pages. On to the text:

A star-studded crowd including former US President Barack Obama had gathered to watch hotly tipped college basketball player Zion Williamson, but the 18-year-old's night unraveled after just 33 seconds when his Nike shoe fell apart. 

Likewise "hotly tipped." You could at this point also wonder how the "star-studded crowd" of the lede became the "star-studded match" of the hed, but that risks taking our eye off a different ball. Do you suppose some of the star-studded crowd (Obama, for example) might have actually been there to, you know, watch Carolina and Duke play? But onward:

... Tickets for the local derby were reportedly available for over $3,000 and freshman forward Williamson -- described by double NBA champion Kevin Durant as a "once-in-a-generation athlete" -- was a big reason for the inflated prices.

Williamson's top-ranked Duke side was on a nine-match winning streak, but without their 285-pound 6 feet 8 inch star player the Blue Devils fell to a 88-72 defeat Wednesday.

No, no and no. "Derby" for "any kind of important sporting contest" (as the OED tells it) appears to be exclusively British. We can do "our side" or "their side," but the definite "side" -- as in "Group F's top and bottom sides" is also "chiefly Brit." And those things with 20 minutes to the half are games, not matches. (And if you can hyphenate one number compound, you can hyphenate another, and let's not forget the delightfully blown participle in the second graf: "Williamson ... went down hard when his shoe split in half while planting his foot.")

We should expect things to be different in different Englishes, and toy departments everywhere will always provide their own delights. (I affirm that my life is richer for the British sports phrase "banana skin," but I wouldn't bet on me to use it correctly in a headline.) But could we at least raise the possibility that CNN misunderstood both its audience and its story here?

I raise the latter point because of this follow-up, which suggests why news organizations tend to be easy prey for practitioners of fake news:

Nike is playing damage control after Duke basketball phenom Zion Williamson tore his sneaker in a game Wednesday evening.

Nike's (NKE) stock was down more than 1% on Thursday. Nike builds its reputation around creating premier shoes and clothes for athletes, but that image took a hit with Williamson's sneaker snafu. 

That's the sort of combination of evidence and guesswork that leaves you open to claims that we have the Greatest. Economy. Evar. And indeed, if you overlook the baseline and increments on the Y-axis, it looks like a case for damage control:

One of the nice things about the CNN site, though: it provides the context that the reporters don't seem interested in: whether Thursday's decline (1.05%) is a lot, a little, or sort of in-between. Here's Nike for the past month:

We don't seem to be seeing much hair-pulling over a similar one-day decline at Raytheon:

... or Martin Marietta:

"True" is a necessary condition of news, but it's not always a sufficient one. If a change of 1% in a stock price isn't a story most times it happens, why are we sure it's a story just because we can run a picture that -- curse the phrase -- "went viral"?

* How old is Your Editor? "Drop-add means standing in line for 80-column punch cards in the Tin Can in August" years old.

Transcription follies

Did anybody at the Nation's Newspaper of Record actually listen to the Joni Ernst victory speech? Or, you know, watch the earlier campaign ad?

An article on Thursday about some of the Republicans’ rising stars of the 114th Congress quoted incorrectly from comments by Senator-elect Joni Ernst, who on Tuesday night became the first woman elected to Congress from Iowa. She said: “We are heading to Washington. And we are going to make ‘em squeal!” — not “We are heading to Washington. And we are going to make a squeal!”

Sometimes, the best question a copy editor can ask is something on the order of "Why would she say that?"

Today in news language: Whaddaya, nuts?

Looks like a little confusion on the Language Arts Desk over at New York's Hometown Newspaper. The thug in question speaks "perfect English" on the front; inside,* he has something called a "North American accent," but on Twitter, it's "unaccented English." Given the interest last month in the accent of evil -- "linguistic experts studying the voice on the YouTube clip believed the voice bore a definite British accent, most likely from London," the same reporter wrote -- what could it possibly be?

The story doesn't make things much clearer:

The newest voice of Islamic State terrorism sounds alarmingly like a son of the Midwest.

Alarmingly? What did he do, say "Missouruh" at graduation or something?

A newly released Islamic State propaganda film ends with the gun-toting jihadist speaking in perfect English, raising speculation that he’s a homegrown Muslim militant.

The man with the North American accent then joins in a mass execution.

Which sounds a bit like backtracking -- from Midwestern to "perfect" and then back to, um, "North American." Wonder what that could mean?
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Come and listen to my story 'bout a man ...

How do those urban sophisticates view the wilds of New Jersey, Nation's Newspaper of Record?

The Hunt column last Sunday, about the search by Angela Putman and Matt Jackson for a rental apartment in New Jersey, quoted incorrectly from comments by Ms. Putman about her new neighborhood, Bayonne. She said, “It is really cute,” not “It is really hick.”

I really do hope someone asked for an explanation of that one.

Gotham tab noun pile spread preposition link

The monarchist takeover of the New York Post has been an open secret for some time now, but this one from the New York Daily News comes as a bit of a surprise. It packs a lot of redtop -- claim quotes, two noun piles, and a verb-replacing preposition -- into six words.

Are they driving on the wrong side of the road up there too?

On what planet ...

... with how many backward-rotating methane-fed suns, does the editor of the, you know, New York Times become "NYT Jill"?

Oh, right. The strange world of the Murdoch redtop! These are from the spring 2004 stash:

TV Henry is broke
TV Kiefer injured in bar fight
TV Carol sees spot where skydive daughter died
TV Chris is new Dr Who

In other words, The Drudge Report* isn't just the sort of place where stories reflecting gender equity issues get headlines that, you know, exemplify gender equity issues. It's also the sort of place that bows to foreign headline dialects, and that's just flat-out un-American. (Not to mention the claim quotes.)

When, when will Drudge and the New York Post be held to account for their traitorous headlines? Only you have the answer, America!

* If you get the "war" bit, you read far too much paranoid media for your own good and should take a vacation.

No, but thanks for askin'

A simple rule is hereby proposed for stylebooks everywhere:

When in doubt, use the grownup spelling.

I'm certainly not suggesting there's no g-droppin' in hockey. (Just heard a nice fat one midway through the second period here). If you wanted to bet that it's unusually frequent among hockey announcers, though, I might suggest that's not only a dumb bet but a pretty boring one. If that's the most interesting thing you hear, you need a lot more Don Cherry in your life.

This isn't even a pickin'-and-grinnin' g-drop -- the sort presentation editors use as a way of showing they respect your people's quaint habits and didn't really just ride in on a turnip truck from New Jersey. Rather than a dumb excuse, it has no excuse at all. (OK, maybe one -- another capital letter actually won't fit in the reefer. So shave the picture or shrink the hed a couple points.)

 As for the stupid question, let's not be too quick to assume a winged victory would be an "upset." Datsyuk just made it 1-0.

Playoff preview: Deke of Earl

Let's start with a few questions for language fans:

• How well do you get the summary deck shown at right?
  Dissidents and supporters abroad are determined to deke the communist regime's security agents (Miami Herald, 1A Sunday)
• Where are you from?
• What's your favorite sport on TV?

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Oh, stop it

A suggestion for the Foremost Newspaper of the Carolinas: Should you want people to think that you actually live there, and that you're not just puttin' on a front to baffle the rubes, don't save your g-droppin' for the "wow, that's so SOUTHERN!" stories. Come to that, don't save your g-droppin' for nothing at all. It's annoying and stupid. Stop it.

Tab hed merge row 'widening gyre'

Might as well just turn Old Glory upside-down in the nameplate there, New York Post. No real American rimrat would have referred to the recently departed actor as "Seymour Hoffman" in a hed. Especially since none of the Post's stories on the matter seem to use anything but "Hoffman."

Why this assumption about appropriate second references for men known by three names is so British-sounding is still a mystery (and thanks to all who checked in with observations last time it came up). It does seem to work best with middle names that could go either way -- even the Sun probably wouldn't call Jim Ed Brown "Ed Brown" in heds. But apparently you guys over there think we're up to something over here that, in general, we aren't.

Redtop hed dialect shock merge horror

Is the austere beauty of the American tabloid hed becoming indistinguishable from the baroque splendor of the London redtops? That's the impression I get from the claim quotes here.

Owing in part to their libel laws, I expect the British would avoid some of the characterizations in text:

Deranged suspect Sean Farrell, 24, called his grandmother after killing his mom — a nurse who helped care for sick children — to confess, court papers show.

“Sean told me he was scared and confused,” stunned granny Letitia Dunn told cops, according to documents.

... but the real interest here is the hed -- particularly the quotes and the lack of the comma. Input from both sides of the ocean is welcome: are we losing the core elements that make our tabs different?

This week in heds: British invasion

British-style heds are pretty common in the New York Post, which occasionally improves itself by importing talent from the far-distant Murdoch properties, and to a lesser extent at foxnews.com, because Fox! But when we get two distinctively British heds on the front of the News, we should think about hanging a lantern in the steeple of the Old Boston Herald or something.

At the top of the Friday page above, note the prepositional crossover in "CBS' Miller in NYPD stunner." American hed practice calls for a verb here: "NYPD terror chief choice baffles bigs" or "Intel world stunned at TV dude terror pick." The British redtops just let the preposition join the relevant NPs: "Yob brothers in hoods ban" or "Lad on jogger stabbing rap."

At the bottom is a classic noun pile, "Class lab fire horror," which may be this story but you never know, because verbs. As the inside hed and the link suggest, American practice instinctively goes for a passive verb -- "students injured" seems to get the job done -- as long as nobody is standing next to the slot and yelling about the evils of the passive voice.

How about "TV GUY IS NEW TERROR CHIEF"? You can see that construction on both sides of the ocean, and downstyle is always easier to follow than ALL CAPS, but this one's strictly American, because indefinite. The British style would be something like "TV Chris* is new Dr Who," where "TV Chris" is "that guy Chris you've seen on TV," whereas "TV Guy" is "some guy you might know from TV."**

Anyway, observations are welcome: Shock horror outrage, are our tabloid dialects merging?

* See also "TV Henry is broke," "TV Kiefer injured in bar fight," "TV Carol sees spot where skydive daughter died," et al.
** For practice, translate: "TV Kate In Nude Sir Pic Row"

Left hand, right hand

Whatever you make of the tales of who's stifling whom over at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, you may draw some conclusions from the evidence.

At top, the Fox News homepage asks whether the NRA idea is possible. The sidebars cover the NRA press conference itself and point out that the feckless commies of Hollywood are avoiding their share of the blame (the latter offering a genuinely remarkable assertion: "Not unlike the NRA, lawmakers fear the Motion Picture Association of America and their political allies"). At bottom, the New York Post is a little more direct. Whatever the Murdoch empire may be united on (and there's a lot), this issue isn't it.  

Fans of hed dialect will note that the Post, despite the American flag in its nameplate, follows a distinctly British tabloid pattern by using a preposition where an American hed would be looking for a verb: "NRA loon in bizarre rant over Newtown." Its tabloid rival, the Daily News, follows American style: "Vile NRA nut blames EVERYONE and EVERYTHING except the guns."

Stupid hed tricks

Seriously. Are you people not embarrassed to be fakin' that down-home stuff in the 1A skybox? Especially when the story itself comes with a hed that (a) is properly qualified* and (b) uses the grownup spelling for the gerund "fishing"?

Why does the Observer persist in the repellent nonsense of g-droppin'? Is it supposed to make the peasants in the eastern part of the state think you aren't a big-city paper, flush with strangers from New Jersey? What is with you guys?

* Since the qualification includes the auxiliary "can," it also avoids that pesky agreement question. There are lots of reasons not to write stupid headlines!

Fun with dialect: Pot heds

I expect everyone knows exactly what the hed ("'Stunted' pot plants cannot grow" on the homepage, where space is tighter) means, so ...

1) What does the hed mean?
2) Where are you from?
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Williams. Vaughan Williams.

I've been using a "Luther King" hed from the Times for a couple years now to illustrate the hazards of random style guesses. Observations from closer at hand are welcome, but what I expect is happening is that the subs are taking a handy shortcut: Anybody who uses three names on first reference uses the last two on second reference.

The hed has since been tweaked (it's now "King statue quote 'to be changed'," with the claim quotes intact), and the story appears to have been updated recently, so I can't tell if the original text also used "King" for "Martin Luther King" on second reference. Still, it's a useful reminder of how easy it is to put a foot wrong in a shortcut.

Dialect: The rule is 'don't'

Can you guess from the hed where this one is going?

GREENLAND, N.H. -- Rick Perry, who entered the 2012 GOP race Saturday, greeted his first crowd of voters here with two words rarely heard in these parts: with a wave, he let out a boisterous “Hi, y’all” to a crowd clad in khakis and button ups gathered around a backyard pool.

Really? People in New Hampshire don't hear "hi" very much? Did we miss last week's Outlook section?

In a CNN debate in New Hampshire this summer, she introduced herself to voters by listing her professional credentials first: "Hi, my name is Michele Bachmann. I'm a former federal tax litigation attorney."

Sorry, that wasn't nice. But anyway, we seem to have a reporter who's obsessed with "y'all," and that can't end well:

There was also this: “Y’all holler outta question” to open up a question and answer* session.
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Morning cannibalism report

Here's the NPR foreign staff, bein' all folksy as it introduces the nation to campaign-trail dining in South Carolina:

In more than a half-century of working here, Stroble has served up candidates from John Connally to Richard Nixon to Ross Perot.

Don't think so. Here's the same phrasal verb later in the story:

Tommy's Ham House in Greenville serves up country ham, grits, red-eye gravy and sweet potato pancakes.

"Serve" can go both ways: you can serve customers, and you can serve the food they eat. But "serve up" can't. It's for the stuff on the plate. Be careful when you're featurizin' up your campaign reporting, lest you end up shootin' yourself in the foot.

Unlikely story

Poor old "likely." No matter how often it produces the birth certificate (which it's apparently been doing since the 14th century), somebody's still going to proclaim that it isn't a real adverb -- at least, not unless accompanied by "very" or some other adult guardian.

Bierceologist Jan Freeman credits this peeve to "Write it Right" a century ago, but it's going strong today. The street edition of the NYT style manual says the "she will likely go" construction is "dialect," by which it apparently means "something the lesser breeds say"; the Merriam-Webster Concise Dictionary of English Usage calls that construction "well established in standard general use in North America." Stylewise, adverbial "likely" belongs firmly in the middle range. You don't have to like it or use it yourself, but you can't ban it on grammar grounds.

Evidence-based conclusions about language aren't a license to do whatever you want, though, as illustrated by the lede above. "Likely won't" looks pretty well established, and the adjectival "likely to be gone" in the hed is fine, but "unlikely will offer contracts" is out of bounds. You wonder where the editors were -- though you really don't anymore, do you?