Slightly pregnant, sort of dead

Hey, all you S&W-bashers* out there: Don't throw out your copies of the Little Book just yet! Send 'em off to foxnews.com, which still seems to be having just a bit of trouble, headline-wise, telling the difference between "omit needless words" and "omit words."

Yes, Virginia, there is a difference between an "assassination" and an "assassination attempt." It's sort of like the difference between "murder" and "attempted murder": see, in one case, the attempt succeeds, and in the other, it doesn't. And if the victim is conscious and talking after surgery, that decision is pretty clear.

What it would take to remove the hedge "possible," I don't know. Perhaps the assailants who hosed the minivan down with automatic rifles were just trying to knock flyspecks off the finish. If there's some concern about that (or, realistically, some other shade of doubt that news practice simply can't eliminate), you could simply stick to the events and let readers' lurid little minds draw their own conclusions about motive. But don't imply someone's dead if your answer is "well, not really."

* Anniversary comment upcoming at some point, but not till some stuff gets done.