Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh

It's technically possible, I guess, to write a worse hurricane hed than this one. But why bother when the bar has been set so high?

Please don't do this. If you see a friend hunched over a computer and writing "Hello, Dolly," just go ahead and call the brain police.
Testy Copy Editors has hosted a long crusade against "Hello, Dalai," "Hello, Dali" and the like, and colleagues there have already sighted "Hello, Dolly" in newspaper storm coverage. In that spirit, what can we add but: No more "Hello," or ... got it?




3 Comments:

Blogger Katrina said...

I saw "A Kat-astropic storm" as a 1A banner the day after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. It was on a tiny daily out of Northwestern Ohio. I swear I did not hallucinate this.

5:09 PM, July 23, 2008  
Blogger Denise said...

The worst part about "Hello, Dali" is that his name is pronounced dah-LEE, emphasis (and accent) on the 2nd syllable, as any good Poynter fellow who took the docent tour would know. . .

But yeah. Any time I hear someone trying to write a pun hed in connection with a storm, no matter how far or how miniscule, I bust out the 2-by-4. Hacksaw Jim Duggan style.

5:14 PM, July 26, 2008  
Blogger fev said...

Way back in my first newspaper job, the rag one town over (Durham, if you have to know)once hedded a hurricane tale thus:

FLORIDIANS ALERTED
TO EYE LUSTY FRED

I still have that in a folder somewhere, I hope.

10:46 PM, July 26, 2008  

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