Headlines in the papers tell of fighting in the streets

[venta]

I do try not to harp on about grammar. I really do. A lot of the time someone misses out an apostrophe and hey, it's wrong, but I knew what they meant. I know my punctuation isn't always perfect either.

But, dear BBC, you are a reputable journalistic institution. And that missing hyphen completely changed the meaning of the headline.

Child killer Robert Black found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy tells me that Robert Black, who is under 18, is guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.

What you meant was Child-killer Robert Black found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy, ie Robert Black, a convicted killer of children, is guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.

Flippin' sort it out.

I do take it as read that, due to the law of St Sod, I will have misplaced at least one apostrophe in this post.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Also, they have occasional attacks of HEADLINE NOUN OVERUSE SHOCK!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have occasionally had trouble parsing their headlines due to being unsure which of the nouns I should read as verbs :)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

It's not just the papers.

[venta.livejournal.com]

What a particularly fine example :)

I actually did laugh out loud. Though kind of quietly.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy. When I started to read the actual story, and discovered Jack Straw was speaking "on behalf of the angel Gabriel" I thought how foolish I'd been to fall for what was clearly a satire, not the BBC at all...