Headline puzzle of the day
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Philip Taylor writes:
I have read this headline over and over again, and I still have absolutely no idea of what it means.
"Sir Patrick Vallance calls for net zero to have immediacy of search for Covid vaccine"
Can you do any better before reading the full article ?
Readers may want to try their luck before they hit "Read the rest of this entry" to see my guess.
Over-priming of internet-related concepts led me first to the idea that Sir Patrick wants Google to make it as easy for people to do web searches for "net zero" options as for Covid vaccination options. Which doesn't make sense…
When I clicked on the link, the subhed helped, though perhaps that's cheating: "Former chief scientific adviser backs Labour’s green energy plans and calls for urgent action to end the UK’s excessive carbon emissions".
Perhaps based on that hint, I re-conceptualized "search for Covid vaccine" as the rushed vaccine-development effort by pharmaceutical companies and various governmental agencies, early in the Covid pandemic. On that interpretation, the headline seems to mean that
- the search for a Covid vaccine was urgent and therefore had great "immediacy", motivating large-scale multi-directional efforts aimed at achieving short-term results, in months rather than years or decades;
- Sir Patrick asserts that "net zero", i.e. equality of reduced CO2 emissions and increased CO2 capture, should be seen as equally urgent, motivating equal socio-political "immediacy" over equally short time frames.
The article's first sentence supports this interpretation:
Sir Patrick Vallance has thrown his support behind Labour’s green energy proposals, warning that the race to net zero should be treated with the same immediacy as the search for a Covid vaccine…
Michael P said,
May 31, 2024 @ 6:17 am
The same meaning occurred to me rather quickly.
This may be one of the rare cases where the headline is clearer with _more_ of a noun pile, specifically "… immediacy of Covid vaccine search".
Mike H said,
May 31, 2024 @ 7:54 am
Aha! I wouldn't have got it without your explanation.
"SPV calls for [the quest for] net zero to have the same immediacy (priority) as the search for [the] Covid vaccine [in 2020/2021]"
I thought it was somehow saying that processes behind the continuing search for Covid vaccines (if that's even a thing) should produce less carbon.
Scott P. said,
May 31, 2024 @ 9:31 am
I had difficulty with it because in my idiolect 'immediacy' is a state, not a scale, one thing can't have more of it than another, so you can't use it to compare things. What the headline writer needed is a word like 'priority' or 'urgency,' which have different meanings.
Philip Anderson said,
May 31, 2024 @ 12:28 pm
I also had no difficulty understanding the meaning. But this headline is not an uncompromising noun pile, which may help interpretation: consider “SPV demands Covid vaccine search immediacy for Net Zero”.
@Scott P
I don’t see “immediacy” as a scale here, but an absolute: back in the day, the vaccine search was what was needed immediately, which is stronger in my mind than even “most urgent” or “highest priority”.
Rick Rubenstein said,
May 31, 2024 @ 3:40 pm
I figured this one out quickly, but I think it would have been much clearer with "same immediacy as" instead of "immediacy of". Or even better, "same urgency as". But maybe Sir Vallence used the word "immediacy" in a speech.
Scott P. said,
May 31, 2024 @ 3:59 pm
I don’t see “immediacy” as a scale here, but an absolute: back in the day, the vaccine search was what was needed immediately, which is stronger in my mind than even “most urgent” or “highest priority”.
If it were an absolute, then there's no need to reference the COVID vaccine. You'd just say "Sir Patrick Valence calls for net zero to have immediacy."
Viseguy said,
May 31, 2024 @ 4:14 pm
I got it quickly. The grammar was not problematic, but I had to pause a second to recall what "net zero" means. I think I was briefly derailed by the somewhat unusual juxtaposition with "Covid vaccine"; "immediacy" didn't help, either.
David Morris said,
May 31, 2024 @ 6:33 pm
I got it almost immediately. Awkward, but comprehensible with appropriate background knowledge.
Eric TF Bat said,
May 31, 2024 @ 7:57 pm
I'm Australian, and I understood it without trouble because "net zero" is a commonly used noun in political discussions here. I presume the same is true in the UK Is it true to say that it's less well known in the US? It would be interesting to cross-check the nationality of commenters who did and didn't understand the headline immediately.
Viseguy said,
May 31, 2024 @ 9:02 pm
@Eric TF Bat: Nationality USA (NYC) here. I'm perhaps more used to seeing "net zero carbon emissions" or some other cue indicating an environmental context, at least on a first reference, but I don't regard it as absolutely necessary. I mean, the unadorned "net zero" sank in after a couple of seconds, and probably would have done so more quickly had I not been thrown off by the juxtaposition with "Covid vaccine". The quirks of this headline aside, I'd be surprised if "net zero" weren't equally comprehensible to "educated" English speakers worldwide, regardless of nationality.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
May 31, 2024 @ 11:23 pm
The headline did not make sense to me, even though I read a fair amount of U.S. news. I latched onto the reference to the Covid vaccine and tried to figure out what medical problem “net zero” applied to, even though I have seen the term plenty of times in environmental articles. My reaction might have been different if I had seen the headline with an “environment” tag over it or in a section of articles on climate change.
The other side effect of reading the headline is that now Gene Pitney’s rendition of “(The man who shot) Liberty Valance” is now looping through my head.
Nathan said,
May 31, 2024 @ 11:41 pm
I'm an "educated" American who'd never encountered net zero before. I hadn't a clue.
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2024 @ 3:54 am
Briton, very familiar with "net zero [carbon emissions]", but totally unable to understand the headline until others helped out. I have tried re-casting the headline many times since those above explained it, but am still unable to find a better alternative that does not require more words — Michael P's proposed noun pile-up helps, but doesn't fully solve the problem.
Scott P, said,
June 1, 2024 @ 9:24 am
The better phrasing would be "Sir Patrick Valence calls for net zero to have top priority"
Barbara Phillips Long said,
June 1, 2024 @ 10:32 am
Covid vaccine search a model for achieving net zero, says Sir Patrick Vallance
Net zero goal as urgent as Covid vaccine efforts were, says Sir Patrick Vallance
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2024 @ 11:42 am
Both are infinitely better than anything I was able to achieve, Barbara, but the first does not bring in the "immediacy" element, so could well leave the reader wondering "in what way". The second certainly captures this element, but for reasons I find impossible to explain the trailing "were" of the first clause jars for me, so I would propose an active-voice re-cast along the lines of the following — "Sir Patrick Vallance says achieving net zero now as urgent as Covid vaccine search was". WDYT ? My "now" is added to justify/balance/explain the trailing "was".
JPL said,
June 1, 2024 @ 5:01 pm
Philip:
Sorry, I've only just opened this post and read the last three or four comments (plus the headline in the OP). I should probably read the rest of it, but anyway:
"Sir Patrick Vallance advocates immediacy for net zero as with covid vaccine search"
Is that OK?
Philip Taylor said,
June 2, 2024 @ 4:54 am
Certainly "OK", JPL, my only problem being that I would read it as advocating contemporaneous immediacy for net zero and for [the] covid vaccine search, whereas in reality the former is lacking immediacy while the latter has already been afforded it.
JPL said,
June 2, 2024 @ 5:35 am
How about "… as formerly with covid …"?
Philip Taylor said,
June 2, 2024 @ 6:54 am
Or how about "Sir Patrick Vallance advocates same immediacy for net zero as was afforded covid vaccine search" — 15 words, the same as the original.
JPL said,
June 2, 2024 @ 3:48 pm
Clearest one yet! Same number of words, much clearer than the original, no awkwardness: looks like success!
With the original headline one wonders why the proponents of "net-zero" are concerned with the search for a covid vaccine. The key is to focus the comparison ("… same immediacy … as …").
Andreas Johansson said,
June 3, 2024 @ 1:16 am
I couldn't work it out, probably because no relevant sense of "immediacy" occured to me.
Associations to the Holy Roman Empire were amusing, though. (Principalities, cities, etc in the Empire were said to have immediacy if they were directly subject to the emperor.)
Peter Clark said,
June 4, 2024 @ 4:29 am
Two things made me stumble over this.
1. The odd use of ‘immediacy’. As others have said, the headline-writer really meant ‘urgency’.
2. The lack of a structural parallel between ‘net zero’ and ‘search for Covid vaccine’. ‘net zero’ should really be something like ‘action to reach net zero’.
It didn’t take me long to work out that it meant ‘Sir Patrick Vallance calls for action to reach net zero to be as urgent as the search for a Covid vaccine was’. (I speak British English and have lived most of my life in London.)
Here’s my attempt to put that in a headline.
‘Race now for net zero like we raced for Covid vaccine says Sir Patrick Vallance’
Philip Taylor said,
June 4, 2024 @ 5:22 am
I think that this is one of those cases, Peter, where "as" is required and "like" can be misleading — I would re-cast your version as ‘Race for net zero as we raced for Covid vaccine' says Sir Patrick Vallance.