Garden path of the day
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Encountering the headline "Whip rules furore claims first victim" on the Guardian's front page, Ian Preston (who has plenty of experience with British Headlinese) confesses to interpretive problems:
At first I thought a government parliamentary official (a "whip") had issued a ruling either regarding a victim of claims about a furore or decreeing that a furore had claimed a victim. Neither turns out to be the case. It is a story about horse racing and a controversy regarding rules about (non-metaphorical) whipping has led to a resignation. I think the problem is that "whip", "rules" and "claims" are all words which could be either nouns or verbs – in fact, it is not until "claims" that you reach a verb here but that's not immediately obvious.
The online version has a slightly longer headline, "Whip rules furore claims first victim as Paul Struthers quits BHA post", though it's not clear that this makes it easier:
Adrian said,
November 19, 2011 @ 8:45 am
You know what I'm going to say: there's a hyphen missing. It should be "Whip-rules furore". There are plenty of zombie rules cluttering up newspaper style guides – why not include something useful in them such as how to use hyphens to aid clarity?
The Ridger said,
November 19, 2011 @ 10:17 am
The full version does make it easier to settle on "claims" as the verb, I feel. But unless you know who Paul Struthers is, it's no easier to decide if this is politics or horse racing or something else entirely.
Picky said,
November 19, 2011 @ 10:37 am
But this is all getting rather tedious. Speakers of BrHeadlinese will now submit the view that the head is transparent; speakers of AmHeadlinese will then submit that it is in various ways opaque, unrefined and absurd. May we now move on?
Robert Coren said,
November 19, 2011 @ 10:53 am
I was pretty sure I 'd gotten it (and I was right) when I got to "furore". (I didn't know whether the "whip" that the rules concerned was literal or metaphorical, but that didn't really matter.) "Rules" as a possible verb went out the window right there, as "furore" made no sense as the object of "rules".
C Thornett said,
November 19, 2011 @ 11:30 am
I had also guessed that it was to do with parliamentary whips, and I have nearly 40 years' experience of British headlines. I have very little knowledge of or interest in horseracing, so that was not what first came to mind.
I did identify 'claims' as the best candidate for the verb.
John Roth said,
November 19, 2011 @ 11:37 am
It's context. Examining the screen shot of the Guardian page makes it quite clear that it's a sport, and that "whip rules," whatever they are, is some kind of a continuing story.
This seems to be a simple matter of pragmatics: taken out of context it seems to mean one thing to many people; in context it's perfectly clear what is meant.
If that same headline was on the front page (which it apparently was) it would lead me astray.
Ian Preston said,
November 19, 2011 @ 12:24 pm
To clarify, the shorter headline was on the front page of the Guardian website, not the print edition. The screenshot above with the longer headline is what you would click through to from that. The print edition, so far as I can see, has only a short item in the sports pages headed "Struthers leaves BHA".
dw said,
November 19, 2011 @ 1:46 pm
The only ambiguity for me was the meaning of "whip", and that is a purely lexical matter.
I'm going to be tediously repetitive and claim that
Energy license fines fuel industry ire
is far worse than either of the recent British examples. Anyone disagree?
Janice Byer said,
November 19, 2011 @ 2:43 pm
The web edition of today's Bouquet of Blossoms Crashing (BBC) bears this headline
"Average" height yields most children
…which couldn't find a point anywhere in my mind.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15779275
George Amis said,
November 19, 2011 @ 2:50 pm
@dw
Well, I'll disagree. I got your example right with no trouble at all, and I didn't know anything about the story. As a US headline, "Energy license fines fuel industry ire" seems to me pretty transparent, although I can see how someone might find the association of "energy" with "fuel" confusing, and assume that "fuel" isn't a verb. "energy license fines" is a pretty straightforward noun pileup. On the other hand, the UK examples often throw me completely off.
LDavidH said,
November 19, 2011 @ 3:01 pm
@dw: I agree with George Amis; your example is perfectly clear to me (since a licence can't fine anybody). But I've already commented too much on this subject and will therefore second Picky.
sister_luck said,
November 19, 2011 @ 3:12 pm
That BBC headline mentioned by Janice Byer? Only made sense to me after I read the summary on the website. I'm pretty sure whoever wrote this headline made it confusing on purpose.
Janice Byer said,
November 19, 2011 @ 3:16 pm
DW, hee, at first glance, "ire" seemed like a typo for "fire". Then I remembered the Supremes ruled that corporations are people, so it follows an industry could be an irate mob of corporations, but what ???
Rubrick said,
November 19, 2011 @ 3:19 pm
I'd challenge those who always smugly declare that such headlines give them "no trouble" to have such claims tested in the laboratory. I'd bet a moderate sum that they'd show a measurable cognitive delay when parsing "Whip rules furore claims first victim" versus, say, "Furore regarding whip rules claims first victim".
Pi Madison said,
November 19, 2011 @ 4:09 pm
I'm beginning to think the cognitive delay caused by these lovely crash blossoms is intentional — if your eyes spend half a second longer on a headline, perhaps you are more likely to buy the paper?
Or perhaps they're just messing with us, as indicated by the photo in the screen grab: "Parse this!"
Janice Byer said,
November 19, 2011 @ 5:15 pm
Sister Luck and Pi Madison, you two are on to something, I believe. Clarity seems clearly not to be the # 1 criterium for certain news-sites's headline writers.
Janice Byer said,
November 19, 2011 @ 5:15 pm
Sister Luck and Pi Madison, you two are on to something, I believe. Clarity seems clearly not to be the # 1 criterium for certain news-sites's headline writers.
Janice Byer said,
November 19, 2011 @ 5:20 pm
Bummer. Sorry for cloning my comment somehow.
Faldone said,
November 19, 2011 @ 7:04 pm
Rubrick: I'd challenge those who always smugly declare that such headlines give them "no trouble" to have such claims tested in the laboratory. I'd bet a moderate sum that they'd show a measurable cognitive delay when parsing "Whip rules furore claims first victim" versus, say, "Furore regarding whip rules claims first victim".
And I'd be willing to bet that the amount of cognitive delay was less than the extra time required to read the second headline.
dw said,
November 19, 2011 @ 7:20 pm
I'd bet a moderate sum that they'd show a measurable cognitive delay when parsing "Whip rules furore claims first victim" versus, say, "Furore regarding whip rules claims first victim".
To the extent that I can introspect into my mental parser (which may be zero) I would be willing to take you up on that bet.
Reinhold {Rey} Aman said,
November 19, 2011 @ 11:02 pm
@ Janice Byer:
… the # 1 criterium
criterium?
maidhc said,
November 20, 2011 @ 5:53 am
In the context supplied, I think it's perfectly clear. Out of context, not so much.
I wonder if the "British headline" should be approached as some kind of daily puzzle, a sort of ten-second version of the Times crossword.
Janice Byer said,
November 20, 2011 @ 2:53 pm
Rey, heh, I can't pretend to have made a typo. Let's call it an oopso. I appreciate the heads up.
"…the # 1 criterion…"
George said,
November 21, 2011 @ 11:33 am
As if the horse racing wasn't confusing enough, Janice Byers drags in bicycle racing…
George said,
November 21, 2011 @ 11:33 am
Byer, sorry!
Not My Leg said,
November 23, 2011 @ 4:25 pm
For getting the construction right I was pretty far off on meaning. I assumed an MP had resigned over a scandal about rules either related to or issued by the whip (as in, the person holding the position of whip in parliament).
Chad said,
March 6, 2014 @ 11:10 am
As an American, the most confusing part of that headline (although I admit that I misinterpreted whip to be the political meaning, too) was the word "furore", which to me looks like the name of some fantastic creature or magical spell in a fantasy novel. My first thought when reading it was to pronounce it "foo-ROR-ay", and then I parsed the whole thing and realized it was a British spelling of "furor". As someone who is used to words ending in -or being changed to -our when going from American English to non-American English, it caught me off-guard.