Definition:
The abbreviated style of newspaper headlines, a register characterized by short words, cliches, and ellipsis.
See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "Perhaps a copy editor's best test for headlinese is the question: 'How often do I hear this word used in ordinary conversation with its headline meaning?' If hardly ever, the word is headlinese."
(John Bremner, Words on Words. Columbia Univ. Press, 1980) - "In their quest for concision, writers of newspaper headlines are . . . inveterate sweepers away of little words, and the dust they kick up can lead to some amusing ambiguities. Legendary headlines from years past (some of which verge on the mythical) include 'Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel,' 'MacArthur Flies Back to Front' and 'Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans.' The Columbia Journalism Review even published two anthologies of ambiguous headlinese in the 1980s, with the classic titles Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim and Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge."
(Ben Zimmer, "Crash Blossoms." The New York Times, Jan. 10, 2010) - "[W]hen the folks at Variety toss around insider lingo and cryptic headlinese like 'B.O. Sweet for Chocolat' and 'Helming Double for Soderbergh' it's hard to tell what the heck they're talking about."
(Scott Veale, "Word for Word/Variety 'Slanguage.'" The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2001) - "Plane Too Low to the Ground, Crash Probe Told"
(headline quoted by John Russial in Strategic Copy Editing. Guilford, 2004) - "Life on Mars--War of the Words
"This is a headline from 'The Friday Review' Section of The Independent of 21 August 1998. It introduces an article reviewing a fierce scientific debate about the possibility of life on Mars. Headline writers use a wide range of devices to create a very specific style, which is sometimes called 'headlinese.' Their one-liners must put in a nutshell the main point of the news story they relate to and at the same time capture the reader's attention. . . . [I]f we pad out the above headline, we might get something like 'The life on Mars debate remains a war of words.' It will be noticed that the headline as it stands contains no verbs: this is replaced by the dash (--). The structure has the effect of all the focus being on the balanced phrases, 'Life on Mars' and 'War of the Words.'"
(Peter Verdonk, Stylistics. Oxford Univ. Press, 2002) - "A colleague points out: 'It sometimes seems that any time anyone writes a piece about Africa (or, in fact, dark-skinned people), the first (and usually last) headline everyone comes up with is Heart of Darkness. It's unimaginative, and boring, but more importantly perpetuates lazy colonial attitudes, ideas of ignorance and benightedness, etc.'"
(David Marsh, "Mind Your Language." The Guardian, Feb. 14, 2010)
