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verbs - "Gadhafi forces retreat" - how do you understand that?


Our local newspaper had the headline today "Gadhafi forces retreat" and I read it with "retreat" as the verb instead of "forces" as the verb. I know it is a poorly written headline, but which way is the more common way to read it? (In other words, is it likely that no-one at the newspaper noticed the ambiguity?)



Answer



This is a type of ambiguous headline known as a crash blossom. From the Wikipedia link:



Newspaper headlines are written in a telegraphic style (headlinese) which often omits the copula and therefore lends itself to syntactic ambiguity, usually of the garden path type. The name 'crash blossoms' was proposed for these ambiguous headlines by Dan Bloom and Mike O'Connell in the Testy Copy Editors discussion group in August 2009 based on a headline "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms".[3] The Columbia Journalism Review regularly reprints such headlines in its "The Lower case" column, and has collected them in the anthologies Squad helps dog bite victim[4] and Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge.[5]



One of my favorites from the list there is



The British left waffles on Falklands (Did the British leave waffles behind, or was there waffling by the British Left?)



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