What Headlines Aren’t

They aren’t expository writing! Even though people treat them as if they were. Headlines are marcom (marketing communications). We tech writers say that all marcom people are insane, and it’s true!

I’ve been meaning to write a post about headlines, and I ran into this comic on the subject , so here’s the post. First the comic:

Bizarro - 01/06/2019
https://comicskingdom.com/bizarro/2019-01-06

Okay, here are several headlines on one topic in the rather uncontroversial field of astronomy:

  • Our Galaxy is Destined for a Head-on Collision
  • Galaxy collision to send solar system flying?
  • ‘GREAT COLLISION’ COULD WAKE UP THE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE AT THE MILKY WAY’S CENTER
  • Galactic collision could wake up Milky Way’s dormant black hole
  • Black hole in middle of Milky Way could grow TENFOLD, scientists predict HUGE space crash
  • Our Milky Way to Face Double-KO Punch in Two Galactic Collisions – Astronomers
  • The Milky Way Could Crash Into Another Galaxy Billions of Years Earlier Than Predicted
  • Catastrophic Galactic Collision Could Send Solar System Flying into Space

The actual topic sentence should be something like “Astronomers have recently increased their precision regarding the movement of the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

We are not in danger—the event is more than a billion years from now. Are the headlines true? Well, they’re all about side issues, not the main topic. Literally true, perhaps, but misleading!

A lot of us read only headlines, and for every topic I’ve checked into— politics, energy, global warming, environment, economics, private lives of famous people, you name it—both sides (all sides?) frequently distort what’s going on either to get you to click, or to convince you of their position if you don’t read in depth.

And don’t get me started on checking the source of the headline…

Here’s the rule:

Don’t trust headlines!

A Matter of Style

We have four kinds of horizontal lines in English typography. Everybody knows about the hyphen; you even have two keys for it on your keyboard, the minus key, and up toward the right end of the top row of keys. Speaking of that key, the slightly longer horizontal line above the hyphen is, counterintuitively, the underscore character. (If you want the underscore under letters, you have to use the underscore font style, Ctrl-u in MS Word.)

You might or might not know about the other two horizontal lines, the N-dash and the M-dash. (Alt-0150 and Alt-0151 respectively. Hold down the Alt key while you type the digits on the numeric keypad.)

  • Use the N-dash to show a range; your work hours are 9–5, for example.
  • Use the M-dash to show a break in thought. It’s like a strong parenthesis.

And here we come to the matter of style:

Don’t put spaces around your dashes.

Those spaces waste space. Here’s an otherwise good sentence with those bad spaces:

That year — 2014 — three young quantum gravity researchers came to an astonishing realization. 

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-space-and-time-could-be-a-quantum-error-correcting-code-20190103

Yes, you can insert the spaces, but don’t.

PS— I just ran into an alternative to the M-dash in a place where I’m not used to seeing it: Professional writing. That alternative is two hyphens. Typing two hyphens is okay for casual writing, say, on a typewriter, but not in an ezine article. I suspect his editor was asleep n the job. Here’s the sentence:

Hope you stayed up late watching West Coast basketball (and/or the Masked Singer premiere) last night — otherwise you might’ve missed the quasi-surprise drop of this April’s entire Coachella lineup at 11:28 p.m. ET. 

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/festivals/8492113/coachella-2018-lineup-five-takeaways

Don’t do that, either.

This “Whom” is Tricky

First, look at the comic. It’s the second speech bubble.

https://www.gocomics.com/working-daze/2018/12/29

First, a rule:

Who is some kind of a subject
Whom is some kind of an object.

Is the word a subject or an object? How else might you say that sentence?

  • You could say, “Who are ‘they’?” That would make the word a subject, so “who,” not “whom.”
  • You could say, “They are who(m)?” Since the verb is a form of “to be,” the word is a predicate nominative, so we still get “who” not “whom.”
  • Maybe look for an antecedent, which would be in the speech bubble in the upper right. That has “they’re doing,” short for “they are doing.” Still a subject, so we’re still stuck with “who,” not “whom.”

The gal in the glasses is incorrect, using a pretentiousism. Maybe she takes after her mom, who also makes lots of mistakes.

Easy Comma Lesson

I chose this example of the importance of correct comma usage partly because the article I found it in was interesting.

Here’s the rule:

Words between two commas are an aside, and can be removed from the sentence; the sentence still stands.

Here’s the example. Think about the meaning if you take out that second comma.

In June, Amazon bought online pharmacy PillPack, a startup that ships medication directly to customers, for $1 billion.

https://www.wired.com/story/why-hard-escape-amazons-long-reach

See the difference? As the sentence stands, they bought PillPack for a billion dollars. If you take that comma out, you have PillPack shipping meds for a billion. More than I’d want to pay for some pills!

The article in the link is interesting—Amazon is rather diversified.

“May” Gets Misused a Lot

I remember in grade school being taught that we should use “may I” when we want permission, and “can I” when we’re talking about ability.

That rule seems to have fallen by the wayside. I remember writing some math curriculum for IBM twenty years ago, and the subject matter experts insisted we use “can” in the word problems when we writers would have used “may.” Sigh.

See below.

Mutts - 12/28/2018
https://comicskingdom.com/mutts/2018-12-28

To add insult to injury, I frequently see “may” used, especially in writing, when the writer means “might.”

I know, linguistic change and all that, but you lose precision when you take away meanings.

Can—ability. You can do it if you try.
May—permission. You may do it if someone lets you.
Might—possibility. You might get permission if you ask nicely.

You can still get away with using the correct words, and no one will criticize you. And your writing will be better.

A Writing Warning!

Okay, the comic is dated, but the message isn’t:

Don’t trust the spell checker!

https://www.gocomics.com/working-daze/2018/12/27

One Difference Between a Comma and a Semicolon

Here’s a rule:

Semicolons separate independent clauses.
Commas separate parts of a sentence.

An independent clause is a sentence that happens to be attached to another sentence. An independent clause has its own subject and verb, and could stand alone. In fact, the decision as to whether to make something a stand-alone sentence or an independent clause is often a matter of preference—the choice can affect the tone of the writing, but both choices are grammatical.

Here’s a sentence that gets it wrong:

A transition is a one-way link, if an issue moves back and forth between two statuses; two transitions should be created.

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/jira/jira_quick_guide.htm

That comma should be a semicolon. Even a period would work. And that semicolon should be a comma. The “if…” part goes with what follows; it’s a dependent clause (called a protasis, if you want to know the technical term). So here’s what the sentence should look like:

A transition is a one-way link; if an issue moves back and forth between two statuses, two transitions should be created.

Feels better now, doesn’t it?

Haven’t Mentioned This in a While

Redundancy is when you unnecessarily repeat yourself. Conciseness is when you’re not redundant. (Terseness is when you take out too many words) Good writing is concise. No unnecessary words. This applies to especially to expository writing. If you’re writing a love letter or a poem, it’s okay to not be concise. But when you want to explain something, be concise.

Here’s an example of not being concise:

The [watch and clock] tax was repealed after a campaign by the Clockmakers’ Company, and promptly replaced by Income Tax, which U.K. citizens still pay to this day.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-clockmakers-museum

You could write, “…which U.K. citizens still pay” or you could write, “which U.K. citizens pay to this day.” Both have exactly the same meaning, and each way of writing concisely has more punch than the original.

So write punchily!

PS—here’s a picture of a timepiece designed to minimize that tax.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/amunyankhesenra

Two Words for a Generic Human

A word that I don’t see used very often to represent a generic human is one. As in “How does one get this horse to stop?” Better, perhaps, to be more specific and say “rider” instead, but “one” works.

Here’s another such word. First panel, and the punch line.

https://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2018/12/24

If I run into a contemporary use of “one,” I’ll add it to the post.