Sherlocution Holmes is an entertaining UK-based Twitter presence with a bio that reads, "Consultant detective tracking down the best (and worst!) linguistics and language examples." Many of the tweets are humorous illustrations of structural or semantic ambiguity, including many examples of "crash blossoms" — those double-take headlines that are ambiguous enough to be laughably misinterpreted. […]
Ultimate indignity; ultimate crash blossom. Headline in electrek: "Tesla Model 3 driver again dies in crash with trailer, Autopilot not yet ruled out", by Fred Lambert (3/1/19) In this case, the repeat demise would have been much more rapid than the extraordinarily prolonged one reported by Jen Viegas: "Death Happens More Slowly Than Thought", Seeker […]
From Dana Loesch, Relentless, NRATV 8/22/2018: Your browser does not support the audio element. Th- they’re trying to Al Capone the president. I mean, you remember. Capone didn’t go down for murder. Elliot Ness didn’t put him in for murder. He went in for tax fraud. Prosecutors didn’t care how he went down as long […]
Here's a nice crash blossom (that is, a difficult-to-parse ambiguous headline) noted on Twitter by The Economist's Lane Greene, with credit to his colleague James Waddell. In The Financial Times, a promotion of an article inside (a "reefer" in newspaper-speak) is headlined: "Trump demands dog 'Dreamers' deal." Via @james_waddell, a perfect example of headline ambiguity, including […]
Shaun King, "North Carolina police kill unarmed deaf man using sign language", New York Daily News 8/22/2016: This is as bad as it gets. A North Carolina state trooper shot and killed 29-year-old Daniel Harris — who was not only unarmed, but deaf — just feet from his home, over a speeding violation. According to […]
Roger Lustig sends in this trending-on-facebook headline: Police Find Jaguars Running Back Asleep Inside Car Sinking Into a Pond, Reports Say Roger traces the first few steps down the garden path: –Police find jaguars –Police find jaguars running –Police find jaguars running back (from where?) –Police find jaguars running back asleep (talk about "second nature"!) For […]
Readers have recently sent in some examples of crash blossoms in headlines about tragic events. Melissa Chan, "Man Left Brain Dead After French Drug Trial Dies", Time Magazine 1/17/2016. Kim Willsher, "Man left brain-dead after French drug trial dies in hospital", The Guardian 1/17/2016. Will Worley, "France clinical trial: Man left brain-dead after drug test […]
From Andrea Comiskey, a crash blossom on the National Weather Service's site: "Major to record flooding continues over portions of Mississippi River Valley".
Andy Bodle, "Sub ire as hacks slash word length: getting the skinny on thinnernyms", The Guardian 12/4/2014 ("Headlinese is a useful little language – but it shouldn’t creep into the rest of the story. If front pages baffle you, read on for my jargon-busting thinnernymicon"): A stranger arriving in this land, English diploma clutched tightly, […]
CNN International recently sent out this tweet, linking to an interview with Stella McCartney: Stella McCartney: 'My parents opened doors and closed minds' http://t.co/XPlzOiqzbQ #CNNwomen pic.twitter.com/cvMJ5JPxkC — CNN International (@cnni) November 29, 2014 The headline, which also appears on CNN's website, left some people perplexed. Was Ms. McCartney saying that her parents closed minds, or […]
Bloomberg News is notorious for its bizarre, impenetrable headlines. There's a whole Tumblr blog devoted to strange Bloomberg headlines, and Quartz last year ran an article looking into "how Bloomberg headlines got to be so odd." Here's a new one, spotted by David Craig and Brett Wilson:
Via Lisa McLendon, aka Madam Grammar, comes this unfortunately (un)punctuated headline currently on Drudge Report: