Parse this!
Perhaps if I lived in Australia and knew who Williams was? But this headline makes some of the ones fev complains about look positively transparent:
Wow. At first glance, there are no verbs. And then you can't tell (I couldn't anyway) which the verb was. I settled on "(A/The) Jail in Williams cut (its) bid (for something)" - maybe some kind of privatization? - butI was wrong.Williams jail cut bid
The lead makes it all clear:
Gangland killer Carl Williams to appear in Melbourne court in bid to appeal sentence.I say again: wow.
There aren't any verbs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in a hed. But, still. Wow.
1 Comments:
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At 12:10 AM, April 18, 2008
John S. Wilkins had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->There are certain conventions in Australian subediting; one of them is that an attempt to achieve something, usually fiscal, is a "bid"; so the object of the phrase is "Williams' bid". Ordinarily it should be "Williams' bid to cut jail" but that adds three characters - the apostrophe, and "to", plus a space. Since the heading size is mandated by the style guide for stories of a set number of column inches, the sub would have needed to fit as much information in a set space, which usually means a set number of characters. Verbs in headlines are optional, so the mangled mess you have before you.
Carl Williams, by the way, is the guy who murdered or ordered the murder of a number of criminals in a gangland war in Melbourne back in the 80s and 90s. There's both a high profile series of trials and a very interesting TV series ("Underbelly" if it comes your way) based on these events.
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