The Unkindest Cut

The story is gruesome, but the headline gets the location wrong. She was accused in court; the alleged crime happened in her bedroom. The whole thing? Tragic.

Thanks to Beth for the submission.

From the Department of Bad Headlines

A few weeks old, yes. But, for your amusement, we present an accidentally hilarious headline sent our way by a few sharp-eyed readers.

Can a Pelosi titillates Congress headline be far behind?

Accidentally funny headlines

For a good laugh, check out this feature on The Huffington Post.

A sample: Tiger Woods plays with his own balls, NIKE says

(So does everyone else, apparently!)

Friday Sign of the Apocalypse: Unbeleafable

What do you suppose they meant by "leaft"? Did he intend to strike terror into the hearts of innocents by becoming a Quaking Aspen?

Thanks to Linnea D. for the photo.

Truth in Headlines

The sharp-eyed Asa D. sends this along:

This was the top story on Yahoo! Finance at 4:30pm today:

TOP STORIES
Down Ends at New 2009 High as Dollar Slides- AP
Stock buying picked up momentum Tuesday as rising commodity prices and reports on manufacturing and housing pointed to a rebound in the economy.

Calling the Index the “Down Jones” now might be apropos…

Badumcha! Thanks, Asa.

What's a 'crash blossom'?

Holly and Carey sent us a link to this story about the confusion that can sometimes arise with headlines that try to condense too much:

Linguists give a name to an old headline hazardIf brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the trapdoor of ridiculousness—at least in the world of headlines, which have long been prone to unintentional comedy along the lines of “Woman Better after Being Thrown from High-rise” and “Scientists Are at Loss Due to Brain-eating Amoeba.”

Now there’s a name for the phenomenon of ambiguously or bizarrely worded headlines: “crash blossoms,” as suggested by a poster at the Testy Copy Editors site in response to the headline “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms.”

Read the rest.

'Drink Drivers'? Or Drunk Editors?

Oops.

NZ judge rejects drink [sic] driver's swine flu defense
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- A New Zealand woman had a novel defense when she appeared in court on a drunk-driving charge: It was swine flu's fault.

That would be drunk. DRUNK.

Source: a local newspaper that recently laid off a good chunk of its staff.

UPDATE: A couple of people have written to let me know that in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, it's "drink driving." That is all jolly good/bollocks/brilliant for them. In the United States, though, it's drunk or drunken driving. SPOGG's clumsy point was that newspapers that lay off copy editors and fill their pages with wire copy will have all sorts of goofy things in their pages. Now back to our grammartini...

Man...or Octopus?

Michael V. sends this unfortunate headline our way:

Man's arm severed, 3 others critically injured in crash near Midway

Does the man have four or more arms? Is he some sort of octopus? While we are very sorry to hear about the crash, we shake our heads (yes, we are a freak and have many) in dismay at the headline.

The first subject--the arm--isn't quite parallel to the second and it leads to strange interpretations of what happened. Yikes.

And This Is Why...

This is why SPOGG thinks authority (along with foam curlers, hairspray, and sensible suits) is highly overrated.


Thanks to Adam for the screenshot.

Confusing Acronym Alert

Mighty Red Pen made us laugh out loud with this post about confusion that can arise when acronyms mean different things in different places.

National Grammar Day 2009 Wrap-up

We received so many posts from people describing their National Grammar Day celebrations that it will take us a while to share them all. Thanks for all the thought and effort. Stay tuned for amusement!

Meanwhile, Jessica found this headline. Perhaps it means we should all ready ourselves for the coming zombie apocalypse.

Slain suspect jumped judge with 6-inch metal spike

By MARCUS WOHLSEN, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – Investigators on Thursday were trying to figure out how a murder suspect sneaked a 6-inch metal spike into the Stockton courtroom where he attacked a judge with the handcrafted weapon before a detective shot him [not the judge, we hope] to death.

We Could Make So Many Jokes

Just look at that apostrophe after the s in Americans.

What's it doing there?

• Is it protesting the apostrophe catastrophe being perpetuated on signs in England?
• Is it being coyly ironic, showing that we'll save money but squander punctuation?
• Is it trying to possess the saving? (Honey, aren't we all?)
  

Americans' saving more, spending less
Americans are hunkering down and saving more. For a recession-battered economy, it couldn't be happening at a worse time.
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON —
Americans are hunkering down and saving more. For a recession-battered economy, it couldn't be happening at a worse time.

Sigh--about all of it. Really.

A Proposition We Can't Refuse

Oh, how we *wish* this were an actual typo in California's Proposition 8, instead of just hilarity from The Onion:

Typo In Proposition 8 Defines Marriage As Between 'One Man And One Wolfman'

Aroooo!

Insert Uranus Joke

MSNBC had three errors in a headline about tonight's lunacy:

Venus, Jupiter will 'shine' on Monday night
Slendor, crescent moon will illumninate two brightest planets

It's "slender," and they didn't need to separate slender and crescent with a comma because the two adjectives aren't interchangeable. In other words, you wouldn't say it's a crescent slender moon. You only need the comma if you have two equivalent adjectives (the lumpy, bumpy moon... the cold, distant object).

Also, illumninate? Sigh. It's illuminate. We've had days like that, though, so we're just going to offer the editor a hug.

That said, Slendor would make an excellent name for a man from a distant planet. Let's say Uranus. Really. Say it out loud. Yes, that gives us the giggles, every time.

SPOGG hereby apologizes for this post. We woke up at 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. Our natural state before the caffeine has set in is, as the professionals say, 12-year-old boy. Boobs! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Back from the Dead to Threaten Us All

Sue sends this headline along from the Archaeologica Web site:

Ancient Saxons could hold up supermarket

The story itself is about an archeological find that could impede construction of a supermarket. We much prefer Sue's interpretation, and we quake in fear of what might happen if some ancient Huns decided to take on the neighborhood dry cleaner.

(Actually, we don't. They just ruined our favorite coat, and while the label that said "Dry Clean Only Do Not Dry Clean" was perhaps ambiguous, we hoped they'd know what to do with it. So have at 'em, Attila.)

Could Face Certain Death

MSNBC has this headline over its story about Hurricane Ike:

Ike storm surge begins, Houston hunkers down
People still in low-lying areas warned they could 'face certain death'

The article itself says residents of the low country have been warned they "face certain death."

Apparently the editor thought no one could predict such things, and inserted the "could" there to maintain a fair and balanced approach. It does the opposite.

The residents were, in fact, warned of the dangers of staying in their houses during the hurricane. This headline turns sense into nonsense. Is anyone else utterly dismayed at the state of our wimpypants media, so afraid of errors or perceived bias they will edit the sense out of everything?

In any case, we have a newsflash: Each one of us faces certain death. It's a bummer, but there you have it. Live well!

Was It a Circus Bear?

The headline of an AP story we read this morning:

Teacher OK after crashing into bear on a bicycle

That's a pretty talented bear.

Foster Care? This Sounds Criminal

Bad-taste warning. Click away if you're feeling prim.

Here's a headline from the Seattle Times:

11-year-old who once hopped plane, 3 brothers in foster care

It was bad that he hopped aboard a plane. But as far as we know, he never climbed atop his brothers, no matter how bad this headline sounds.

A better headline would have read:

Plane-hopping 11-year-old, brothers in foster care

Marriage: It's Not *That* Bad

This headline appears in the Seattle Times:

Man marries, receives 18-year assault sentence

We've been married 10 years now, and we don't find it anywhere near that bad.

Thanks to Wendy M. for the tip.

How Old is Thought?

Barry L. sends this inadvertently funny headline from the New York Times:

Grand Canyon Older Than Thought, Study Says

We have no idea when the first thought happened. We can, however, say that the Grand Canyon is clearly deeper than many of our own thoughts, and certainly deeper than the ones that make us laugh really hard.