2584: Headline Words
| Headline Words |
 Title text: Roundly-condemned headlinese initiative shuttered indefinitely. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a HEADLINE-GENERATING MARKOV CHAIN - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
News headlines are often very dramatic explanations of minor events; so are the things Cueball says here. Furthermore, some newspapers write their headlines in a stylized way which relies heavily on shorter words (such as "nixed" for "rejected") or cliches (such as "tension mounts").
Here, Cueball has decided to start describing his friends' conversation in headline-style language, but he finds that he has to quit after only a few sentences because Megan finds it annoying.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [White Hat, Megan, Cueball, and Ponytail stand in a row, with White Hat and Megan facing toward the right and Cueball and Ponytail facing toward the left.]
- Megan: Maybe Rob shouldn't host the party. He has cats and some of us are allergic.
- Cueball: Wow, major snub for widely-touted top spot as lavish gala bid nixed.
- Megan: Why are you talking so weird? Please stop.
- Cueball: Ill-advised scheme mulled as tension mounts amid growing backlash.
- [Caption below the panel:]
- My project to speak only in weird headline words didn't last long.
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refresh comments!Discussion
It is ironic how Cueball, being bald, doesn't have any "headlines". 172.68.11.68 06:48, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
- Actually, Cueball being bald would be cause greater susceptibility to the infamous corduroy pillow. 165.225.57.165 23:03, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
I mean, I would be pretty annoyed too if someone talked like that instead of saying "Wow, I can't believe you shot down the idea for the party venue that everyone likes" and "I'm reconsidering my plan (to speak in headline words) since people are starting to get annoyed" (also, "Everyone hated the headline-word thing, so I'm gonna stop") 172.70.178.113 07:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
I have made a new section for trying to explain each of Cueball's three headlines. I tried to make some sense of the first, but think I failed... So please feel free to change or improve my text completely. For sure the above comment gets the correct meaning, but I do not think it is a translation, more a possible sentence to be said instead. --Kynde (talk) 11:55, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
- I tried to expand that :) 108.162.238.34 13:02, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
- After including the stipulation that they "remove grammar" (a vital element to compressing into Headlinese, except of course when it introduces unintentional ambiguity!) I went through and made my own changes to make the "Literal" versions each pad out into the more proper statement(s). I changed some 'literal' wording, but left most and still followed the general source-structure without it being a total rewrite. (Which left some compromises, but should allow the interested reader to still map the various chunks one-to-one and in sequence.)
- Obviously, I expect future-editors to advance (or retract) my changes in various ways because they disagree with my idea of 'literal' language, and indeed what is Headlinese. Which is perhaps more British-biased - If I read newspaper headlines (of papers that I often don't intend to pick off the stands) I seem to see a lot of needless alliteration also going into the mix. "Boris backs down over Brexit border boob!" might be a (made up, especially as he tends not to do that, but probably not far from someone's likely interpretation) certain tabloid-style pronouncement. 172.70.85.79 15:42, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
- ”Squad helps dog bite victim” Szeth Pancakes (talk) 20:27, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for improving the explanation. --Kynde (talk) 11:16, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
- I've tried adding a more staged translation, I'm sure some people will have their objections to my exact use, but the idea is to make the changes clearer. This way you can see where each bit maps to, and also see how that translates to proper meaning, all without too big of a jump... I'm not sure I've done a good job, but I can hope. 172.70.91.116 19:01, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
It may be possible that Randall is reading the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The Shipping News” which is written entirely in headline format. 172.70.178.93 15:11, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
