A ‣ Features of headline language

If a story hits the headlines it suddenly receives a lot of attention in the news.

Here are two typical examples of headlines from tabloid newspapers with comments on their use of language. [popular papers with small pages and short simple reports]

EXPERT REVEALS NEW CLOUD DANGERS

1. Articles, prepositions and auxiliary verbs are oft en omitted from headlines.
2. This use of the present simple instead of the past tense makes the story sound more immediate.
3. The use of language is oft en ambiguous. It is not entirely clear, for example, what cloud refers to here. It is actually about the dangers of storing electronic information on a ‘cloud’ [hosted services on the internet for storing personal data], but it could have referred to dangers relating to the weather. Readers have to look at the story in order to find out.
4. Words with dramatic associations such as danger are oft en used.

TV STAR TRAGIC TARGET FOR CRAZED GUNMAN

This story is about how a well-known television actor was shot by a mentally unstable killer.

1. In order to attract readers’ attention, tabloid newspapers oft en feature celebrities, e.g. film/pop stars and sports personalities.
2. Alliteration such as TV Star Tragic Target is oft en used to attract the eye in headlines and to make them sound more memorable.
3. Newspapers tend to use strong, simple words such as ‘gunman’ in order to express an idea or image as briefly and as vividly as possible.
4. Strongly emotional words like crazed are oft en used to attract attention. [behaving in a wild or strange way, especially because of strong emotion]

B ‣ Violent words

Violent and militaristic words are oft en used in headlines, especially in tabloid newspapers, in order to make stories seem more dramatic. For example, people who cause trouble may be referred to as thugs, yobs or louts.

EU acts to crush¹ terror of thugs

Crackdown² on soccer louts

Palace besieged³ by journalists

Typhoon rips⁴ through town

¹ destroy
² taking serious measures to deal with a problem
³ surrounded, as if by army
⁴ moves in a destructive way

C ‣ Playing with words

Many newspaper headlines attract readers’ attention by playing on words in an entertaining way. For example, a story about a very heavy rainstorm which caused a landslide on a narrow mountain road was headlined Rain of terror. This headline was a play on words based on the expression reign of terror, an expression used about a period in which a country’s ruler controls people in a particularly cruel way.

Another example is the use of the headline Moon becomes shooting star to describe a football match where a player called John Moon shot [scored] the winning goal. Shooting star is an informal expression for a meteor. Here it is used to play on the expression shoot a goal, and also to link to the player’s name, Moon (another astronomical body). The headline is particularly effective because of the association between star and moon in the sky.