While I agree that headlines can be misleading, I have always thought that the lack of specific information in a headline was intentional and is what gets the reader's attention and causes him/her to read the whole story.

The lack of specificity in headlines is tied to trying to sum up an article in a few words.

A good headline writer doesn't deliberately avoid specifics. He/she tries to be specific without excluding important aspects of an article.

This leads to shortcuts. Headline writers have to take shortcuts, because they have so few words to work with.

In this instance, "brings" was a shortcut. I can see Terry's point, but reading headlines that literally will induce headaches ... daily.

Well, that's how I read them. Daily. And so does everyone else who glances at the paper. They see a headline, they think, "oh, interesting." If the story fails to produce what was promised, then that feeling of disappointment in the pit of the reader's stomach? That's the Spokesman-Review losing another reader.

I don't mean to harp on this too much, but I'd been running in to this sort of thing pretty frequently, and it was getting on my nerves.

And telling your readers "reading headlines that literally will induce headaches...daily" is a bit dismissive. And I know there are limitations. Headlines come late in the game. But I think they often try to do too much.

As far as creating interest in the story... that absolutely isn't their job. If all you want is interest in the story itself, then by all means, let it slide, or send all the editors to direct marketing school. But don't expect to have any readers tomorrow, because the vast majority of junk mail ends up in the trash.

Of course maybe you want to educate the headline writers in the use of quality keywords while you're at it, so that when an online reader discovers that the story isn't what they thought it was, they'll have the option of exiting via advertising, which will bring a few cents to the paper.

Um, that last bit was a joke. Ha. Ain't I funny?

I've been thinking about this one for a couple of days (I know - I really need to get a life). I think Terry makes a good point that precision counts, but I've been struggling to find a way to rewrite this headline in a way that would address his concerns and yet still keep the two key elements of the story while fitting the count (unwritten rule of headline criticism, on the copydesk anyway, is that you should always have a suggested replacement).

So, the story is about some guy who turns down a plea deal and winds up getting life in prison. Got to have both of those things in the headline. One alternative is this:

Man who rejected
deal gets life term

That's more precise, but it also has a really ugly split between a verb and its object. Also, we're not sure what the "deal" is. Perhaps we could have had:

Plea deal rejection
ends in life sentence

Again, not quite semantically correct, but it avoids using an active verb to connect the ideas in the way Terry describes. I don't know if that's an improvement, but it's the best I'm able to come up with, with the benefit of hindsight, after this much time.

Headlines perform a number of functions, depending on the story. A short headline for a column or feature story might very well serve only to "tease" people into reading, whereas a head for a hard news story should strive to tell people everything they need to know at a glance. Most stories fall somewhere in the middle.

Also - the headline may be more bothersome to online readers than print readers because the latter have more surrounding context at first glance. I occasionally rewrite print headlines for the Web when they can benefit from additional space, but I rarely have time to check them all.

Terry,

The reality of daily newspapering is that a lot of headlines must be written in a short amount of time. How about this? Come in some time and watch.

Around 6 p.m., most of the pages in the A section, the B section and the Sports section are empty (except for the ads). Five hours later, they're mostly done.

Check Google News for the variety of headlines that appear on a single story. Headline writers come at stories from different angles, and it's not always going to be an angle that pleases every reader (or every reporter).

I don't mean to dwell on this either, but I'd love for people to actually see the last hours of a newspaper being produced. There are many unsung heroes without bylines here.

A visit might be eye-opening.

I can imagine the hectic nature of a "deadline" type operation. I guess our "Monday morning quarterbacking" is mostly designed to point out things we see as possible areas to watch out for, realizing that you may not always have the time. With that in mind, I'd like to say that the headline on page B3 today - "Residents left with ruins after two fires in two days" - really confused me. I eagerly read the article to find out if the assisted living facility fire had been arson, since it was the second fire in two days. When I finished I had found nothing about the second fire. Then I looked closer at the photos and the descriptions to the right, and realized you were talking about two different fires in two different states! I think that might have been better done under two separate headlines.

Please note... I'd love to come in and watch, but I've already been there, and frankly my two-month-old has priority. Full disclosure here as well, I suppose. My wife used to work the "Rim..." (Honestly, can't you folks come up with another name for that?) And I am not unfamiliar with the pressures of a deadline.

(One also has to ask oneself, whenever one is propositioned thus, if the request strikes the proper rhetorical chord with the requestee... that is, will my seeing how the headlines are written, and how late in the game they come, change the fact that I found the headline to be misleading?)

And it's not that I don't appreciate that shortness of deadlines. Not at all. What I'd simply like to do is present the confusion. It's my understanding that my blog-job is to do just that... begin a conversation... have a discussion... see if there might be a better way... and maybe there isn't... but I'll keep yammering doggedly as I am wont to yammer.

It may also be worth noting that I gripe about Google News headlines just about every third moment. It doesn't do me a lot of good because so far there really is no such thing as a Google News is a Conversation blog. Maybe there should be.

What am I asking for? Very little. Just notice. The newspaper is still read by individuals who believe accuracy counts top to bottom, A-1 to Z-whatever. Minor glitches such as this don't necessarily warrant an Accuracy Watch notice, but they do deserve notice, if only to make us all more mindful of language, of usage, of taking care to say what we mean.

Mindfulness. There you have it. Be as mindful of the language implications within the headline as we are of the language implications of the story itself.

Blessings.

A bit off-topic, but "rim" dates to the days when copy desks were organized differently. Has to do with sitting on the rim of the copy desk -- as opposed to the inside, which is where "the slot" and "makeup editor" sat.

Copy desks were often horseshoe-shaped, which was efficient back in the pre-computer days.

Not that I ever witnessed that.