When headlines go bad

John McIntyre posted the following headlines on his blog today, under the apt title of Maybe hire a copy editor:

Yahoo News headline: Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake

Comment on CNN screen crawl: Jewish lobby runs America

MSNBC: I-Team: Judge Married Woman, suspected Abuser

WJZ-TV: Man Arrested For Sexual Assault On College Campus

Reuters: BOJ split vote raises doubts about future easing

CNBC: End of Mortgage Buys Form of Tightening: Pimco

To read more of his You Don't Say blog, click here: http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/

The inner pervert

Lurking Tourette's syndrome: we all have it. My keyboard expressed it for me on Friday, by omitting the crucial 'o' in "the opportunities are countless". Yes, the crucial 'o' - not either of the ones in 'opportunity'. Anyway, now I have my shiny new keyboard (which is disappointingly silent and cannot be clattered upon, no matter how hard I bash), I'm safe - right?

Wrong!

In the words of Sage Davies: "We all have it latently and our subconscious is constantly trying to express it."

It's true. The BBC had a 'pubic' on its homepage the other day, where it should have had a 'public'. And a member of our subs desk recently transformed Richard Pennycook into Richard Pennycock in a headline (rectified before publishing – and no comment, one presumes, on Mr Pennycook).

That same person - let us not dillydally over what may or may not be weighing upon his/her mind - also recently wrote the following headline. Bear in mind this is in nice big print and the eye takes in the first line first...

Shuddering over past cock-
ups and mistakes? They
formed your best training

This was, I think wisely, changed to the following:

Shuddering over previous
cock-ups and errors? They
formed your best training

Last week, in his online Q&A, The Times' chief revise editor Richard Dixon admitted:

At the Telegraph, I innocently wrote a cricket headline: "Willey stands firm for unbeaten 97". It is memorable, at least to me and the poor chief sub who let it through.

And the chief sub here owns up to having had a rather red-faced moment as a trainee at the Reading Chronicle:

Willy gets cocky

It was a story about a little boy - called William - who dressed up as a chicken for a birthday party. Luckily, the proofreaders intervened.

The conclusion? Whether you know it or not, you have an inner pervert just waiting to get out. And the less you look like one on the outside, the more embarrassing it will be when it happens. How to avoid it? Put your dirty head on and look again!

Finally, I couldn't resist. The cock-up headline was just begging to be rewritten as a haiku - you know it. So, here's my offering:

Shuddering over
Cock-ups and errors now past?
They were your training.

Headlines make headlines

Everyone is talking about headlines, it seems.

David Marsh, The Guardian's style guide editor, took on cliches today, in his Mind your language column, while yesterday Sally Baker, feedback editor at The Times, discussed the tricksiness of summing up a story accurately in a headline, in her Feedback column.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are still reeling from the stray "bogging" that made it into the blogging feature in this week's issue. Eek.

Bovine TV

Someone, about two metres to my left, just wrote the headline:

Culling won’t stop bovine TV, says study

Oopsie! Um... TB!