I have a collection of newspaper headlines. While I have my share of unusual interests and habits, collecting newspaper headlines is generally the province of hoarders and batty people in pajamas. I am neither. Why then do I collect them? The answer, like so many things in my life, is because of a book about them.....
I do not like formal English grammar any better than the next person. It is inherently awkward, since ridgid grammarians imposed the orderly rules of Latin construction onto English, a famously plastic language with roots in German and French more than Latin. The result was stultifying classes in 5th grade diagramming sentences. In 6th and 7th grade, however, grammar became fun, as we stopped the drattable diagramming and began working with real sentences and composition. It was here that I learned about gerunds and dangling participles.
A gerund is a form of a verb used as a noun. For example, in the sentence 'Sarah likes singing', singing is a gerund functioning as the object of Sarah's liking. A participle is a verb form used as an adjective, or in a compound verb. This is where the fun begins. When a participle is 'dangling' it is unattached to an identifiable noun, and can thus be interpreted as a verb form, leading to very amusing and nonsensical sentences.
Some of my first real humor in school happened in a 7th grade study hall, when I was reading my grammar book about gerunds and participles. I started reading the examples, and kept laughing and laughing (a no-no in study hall). I recall best 'Hopping across the road, the bud saw the Loch Ness monster.' That ridiculous sentence has me cackling even today.
In medical school, I bought THE BOOK. It was called 'Man Helps Dog Bite Victim', and the 7th grader in me began laughing immediately. It was a collection of misphrased headlines from newspapers, collected by the Columbia Journalism Review. I lost that little paperback book in the chaos of divorce and moving from St. Louis to New York, but I never forgot it. I began looking for misphrased headlines, and they are quite common. Newspapers (and now internet) headlines have to catch attention with limited space and words. This means many conjunctive and other words are left out.....
The first bad headline came from none other than the New York Times, for an article on a Philippine governmental committee that had ended its function.
-Philippine Committee on Assassination Dissolves Itself
Ok, then......
Hard on its heels was one from the New York Post, a much more poorly written paper, telling us about a murderous air conditioner.
-Air Conditioner Plunges from E. Side Window, Slams Woman.
Plunge is different from fall, dive or drop. A dive or plunge implies intention, hence the homicidal AC unit, which we must presume in reality fell or dropped, both of which imply passive participation in the descending movement....
Richmond has proved to be fertile, fertile ground for lousy editing-
-School Program Tries to Recover Students Who Fell Into Cracks
"Get the crane, Roger! We found another. Damned sidewalk cracks!"
-Car Allegedly Fleeing from Police Hits Another; 2 Hurt
apparently Richmond had self-driving, autonomous vehicles.....
-Woman Tied to Judge Jailed
it was never explained exactly how or why a woman roped herself to a judge....
Knoxville has been extremely fertile as well-
-Probe Sites Fire Death Risks
It's OK. In Knoxville we don't always use verbs.....
-Council Ignore's Mayor's Advice
Honest, we don't use verbs. Word won't even let me type this without warnings....
-Effort Launched to Shrink Large Schools
Apparently the tech for phones does NOT work on buildings....
-Alabama Couple Enjoy Shrimp Dip at Knoxville Restaurant
Must have been a very slow news day.
-Whopping Cough Outbreak Cause for Alert
What exactly is a whopping cough? At least Hooping Cough vaguely sounds like the actual disease....
A personal favorite, about a golf tournament, showing that golf is played by astronauts.
-Co-Leaders Return to Earth
-Panel Scratching Heads
Government in action. I have no idea what this is about, or if all of them have lice....
-Ethics, Solid Waste on Agenda
Proof that government really is piled high and deep.....
The saddest thing in Knoxville is that UT does not support its student organizations, forcing them into unusual efforts to finance themselves.
-UT Sororities Selling Mums for Homecoming
Finally, for those who were worried about it-
-Cancer-Free Burps
What? Why is anyone worried about this?
Of course, the best are the ones I have created or imposed on myself. How do you 'impose' one on yourself? By pig-headedly misreading a perfectly reasonable, honorable phrase. When I was in 2nd and 3rd grade I had many of a series called the How and Why Wonder Books. The one that puzzled me was The How and Why Wonder Book of the Human Body. In its section on eyes, ears and noses, there was the following sentence, printed just this way-
Never treat any eye
trouble yourself.
I understood the sentence 'never treat any eye', but the 'tag' of the sentence meant nothing to me. What did it mean 'trouble yourself'? Did it mean you would get in trouble if you treated an eye? That you would be imposing on yourself in some way? I just couldn't get my head to wrap the sentence around the line break, and it drove me nuts for a couple of years. My mother got extremely annoyed with my inability to see that it meant 'never treat any eye problem yourself', but her explanation made no sense to me, because 'to trouble' is a verb, whereas 'to problem' is not a verb (unless you're a politician or rap artist). I did finally understand that 'trouble' was a noun. In even my childhood world, as the son of two doctors, people had illness, disease, or infection, but did not have 'heart trouble' or 'eye trouble', thus I missed its obvious meaning- never treat your own eye problems....
I have embarrassed myself with words in other ways as well. Lou Reed's song 'Walk on the Wild Side' begins "Holly came from Miami effelay. Hitchhiked her way across the USA." Well, at least, that's what I heard. I spent from 1972 to 1979 trying to figure out what effelay was. I tried different emphases. EFFelay. eFFElay. effuhLAY. Nothing worked. Was it like COD, or DHS, or REA, a description of HOW Holly came from Miami? In the anatomy lab, in 1979, I got talking with my friend David Epstein, who introduced me to new music that I still love and listen to (thank you for Moving Pictures by Rush, and The Pretenders!), and asked him what the line meant. He looked at me like I was even weirder than I am and said "Florida". I still cringe as I write this. It was FLA, not a word. Oh God......
The worst, however, and my only personal example of a misplaced phrase, comes from a composition I wrote in 10th grade. I imagined how my grandfather would have received the news of my father's, his son's, death at age 46. I needed to describe his apartment, which included a large portrait of his wife, who had died 28 years earlier, in 1942. That long phrase did not fit well in what for me was a brief scene-setting for the heart of the composition, his reaction to the telegram. In shortening it, I converted what was a near-shrine to his dead wife to a scene of Gothic horror-
"On the dining room wall hung his wife, dead 20 years."
Well, not exactly. I still recall Mr. Greenwood's large, green exclamation point....
I continue to get great entertainment and amusement from poorly phrased headlines, and it is never better (or worse) than when I do it myself. And that is why a non-hoarder, who does not live in his pajamas, collects newspaper clippings...
Ted
I do not like formal English grammar any better than the next person. It is inherently awkward, since ridgid grammarians imposed the orderly rules of Latin construction onto English, a famously plastic language with roots in German and French more than Latin. The result was stultifying classes in 5th grade diagramming sentences. In 6th and 7th grade, however, grammar became fun, as we stopped the drattable diagramming and began working with real sentences and composition. It was here that I learned about gerunds and dangling participles.
A gerund is a form of a verb used as a noun. For example, in the sentence 'Sarah likes singing', singing is a gerund functioning as the object of Sarah's liking. A participle is a verb form used as an adjective, or in a compound verb. This is where the fun begins. When a participle is 'dangling' it is unattached to an identifiable noun, and can thus be interpreted as a verb form, leading to very amusing and nonsensical sentences.
Some of my first real humor in school happened in a 7th grade study hall, when I was reading my grammar book about gerunds and participles. I started reading the examples, and kept laughing and laughing (a no-no in study hall). I recall best 'Hopping across the road, the bud saw the Loch Ness monster.' That ridiculous sentence has me cackling even today.
In medical school, I bought THE BOOK. It was called 'Man Helps Dog Bite Victim', and the 7th grader in me began laughing immediately. It was a collection of misphrased headlines from newspapers, collected by the Columbia Journalism Review. I lost that little paperback book in the chaos of divorce and moving from St. Louis to New York, but I never forgot it. I began looking for misphrased headlines, and they are quite common. Newspapers (and now internet) headlines have to catch attention with limited space and words. This means many conjunctive and other words are left out.....
The first bad headline came from none other than the New York Times, for an article on a Philippine governmental committee that had ended its function.
-Philippine Committee on Assassination Dissolves Itself
Ok, then......
Hard on its heels was one from the New York Post, a much more poorly written paper, telling us about a murderous air conditioner.
-Air Conditioner Plunges from E. Side Window, Slams Woman.
Plunge is different from fall, dive or drop. A dive or plunge implies intention, hence the homicidal AC unit, which we must presume in reality fell or dropped, both of which imply passive participation in the descending movement....
Richmond has proved to be fertile, fertile ground for lousy editing-
-School Program Tries to Recover Students Who Fell Into Cracks
"Get the crane, Roger! We found another. Damned sidewalk cracks!"
-Car Allegedly Fleeing from Police Hits Another; 2 Hurt
apparently Richmond had self-driving, autonomous vehicles.....
-Woman Tied to Judge Jailed
it was never explained exactly how or why a woman roped herself to a judge....
Knoxville has been extremely fertile as well-
-Probe Sites Fire Death Risks
It's OK. In Knoxville we don't always use verbs.....
-Council Ignore's Mayor's Advice
Honest, we don't use verbs. Word won't even let me type this without warnings....
-Effort Launched to Shrink Large Schools
Apparently the tech for phones does NOT work on buildings....
-Alabama Couple Enjoy Shrimp Dip at Knoxville Restaurant
Must have been a very slow news day.
-Whopping Cough Outbreak Cause for Alert
What exactly is a whopping cough? At least Hooping Cough vaguely sounds like the actual disease....
A personal favorite, about a golf tournament, showing that golf is played by astronauts.
-Co-Leaders Return to Earth
-Panel Scratching Heads
Government in action. I have no idea what this is about, or if all of them have lice....
-Ethics, Solid Waste on Agenda
Proof that government really is piled high and deep.....
The saddest thing in Knoxville is that UT does not support its student organizations, forcing them into unusual efforts to finance themselves.
-UT Sororities Selling Mums for Homecoming
Finally, for those who were worried about it-
-Cancer-Free Burps
What? Why is anyone worried about this?
Of course, the best are the ones I have created or imposed on myself. How do you 'impose' one on yourself? By pig-headedly misreading a perfectly reasonable, honorable phrase. When I was in 2nd and 3rd grade I had many of a series called the How and Why Wonder Books. The one that puzzled me was The How and Why Wonder Book of the Human Body. In its section on eyes, ears and noses, there was the following sentence, printed just this way-
Never treat any eye
trouble yourself.
I understood the sentence 'never treat any eye', but the 'tag' of the sentence meant nothing to me. What did it mean 'trouble yourself'? Did it mean you would get in trouble if you treated an eye? That you would be imposing on yourself in some way? I just couldn't get my head to wrap the sentence around the line break, and it drove me nuts for a couple of years. My mother got extremely annoyed with my inability to see that it meant 'never treat any eye problem yourself', but her explanation made no sense to me, because 'to trouble' is a verb, whereas 'to problem' is not a verb (unless you're a politician or rap artist). I did finally understand that 'trouble' was a noun. In even my childhood world, as the son of two doctors, people had illness, disease, or infection, but did not have 'heart trouble' or 'eye trouble', thus I missed its obvious meaning- never treat your own eye problems....
I have embarrassed myself with words in other ways as well. Lou Reed's song 'Walk on the Wild Side' begins "Holly came from Miami effelay. Hitchhiked her way across the USA." Well, at least, that's what I heard. I spent from 1972 to 1979 trying to figure out what effelay was. I tried different emphases. EFFelay. eFFElay. effuhLAY. Nothing worked. Was it like COD, or DHS, or REA, a description of HOW Holly came from Miami? In the anatomy lab, in 1979, I got talking with my friend David Epstein, who introduced me to new music that I still love and listen to (thank you for Moving Pictures by Rush, and The Pretenders!), and asked him what the line meant. He looked at me like I was even weirder than I am and said "Florida". I still cringe as I write this. It was FLA, not a word. Oh God......
The worst, however, and my only personal example of a misplaced phrase, comes from a composition I wrote in 10th grade. I imagined how my grandfather would have received the news of my father's, his son's, death at age 46. I needed to describe his apartment, which included a large portrait of his wife, who had died 28 years earlier, in 1942. That long phrase did not fit well in what for me was a brief scene-setting for the heart of the composition, his reaction to the telegram. In shortening it, I converted what was a near-shrine to his dead wife to a scene of Gothic horror-
"On the dining room wall hung his wife, dead 20 years."
Well, not exactly. I still recall Mr. Greenwood's large, green exclamation point....
I continue to get great entertainment and amusement from poorly phrased headlines, and it is never better (or worse) than when I do it myself. And that is why a non-hoarder, who does not live in his pajamas, collects newspaper clippings...
Ted
Comments
Post a Comment