Double the forbidden fun

What's worse than a "Holy [np], Batman!" hed? A second one with the jump!

Those aren't the last of the problems, of course. If the (ahem) Detroit paper is going to run a five-day-old pickup about the (kaff) Woodward Dream Cruise, if might want to tweak the second graf to "today," from "this month," for such was the date of the Dream Cruise. And it could consider whether the Dream Cruise is a "car show" -- unlike the Bloomfield Township event heralded with the jump, which appears to be one. It might even wonder (a) how much "roaring down Woodward" there is during the cruise (hint: not much) and (b) why anyone would expect to see the thing at the Dream Cruise when it's sitting at a dealership for the bulk of the scheduled cruise.

Oh my what?

Common cold cured, Fractious Near East at peace -- OK, we can see why the 1A centerpiece* is about somebody selling a house.** But that still can't justify the Forbidden Hed over the photo. Kids, if you must -- and you mustn't -- use a hed of the form "[noun] [noun] and [noun], oh my," at least make sure it scans.

One more thing? If this is indeed the case:

You could count the statuary five times and get a different result each time — 60 statues? 70? 80? The garage is like an auto museum.

 ... two possibilities come to mind:

1) You didn't do very well in school, or
2) Don't blink. DON'T EVEN BLINK.

* Well, to be fair, the Andrew McCabe thingy is the top brief on 6A.
** This line could be what put it over the top: "Photos of the home made the rounds on Facebook the last couple of days"

Get off my lawn. Here's why.

I'm not suggesting that a single screenshot actually means that Great Cthulhu is loose again and ravening for delight, but -- supposing he was, do you think we could return to the days when headlines told you what happened, rather than what the story was likely to contain?

That, after all, used to be the real challenge of hed writing: "Amazon to city: Too many morons, too few trains" would have been fun, as would "Amazon: Worst corporate suck-up since the NFL." So I'd like assent to add "Here's why" heds to the list of constructions that are banned under all circumstances, forever.

I'm not especially persuaded by the clause-now-clause or clause-then-clause that you kids are using these days, either. Oh, for the days of "Hotel agrees to settle with poisoning victim's family." And with the whole third line to spare there, is there any particular reason not to tell people which town near Charlotte?

Oh, stop it

One would like to think that, in most of the sentient world, the whole "bigly" thing had been quietly euthanized, oh, a year and a half or so ago. "Bigly" is not what the guy says, plain and simple. You are misinterpreting his pronunciation of the well-known modifier "big league." It doesn't matter whether you think Donald Trump is a disgrace to the English language, a disgrace to the concept of democracy run by grownups or a disgrace to humankind in general; all those can be true at the same time, but he still doesn't say "bigly." Somehow, that seems to have escaped the Washington Post:

At this point, we're justified in calling for a ban on heds of the form "just ... bigly," from now unto the end of time Amen, on grounds of sheer tedium. But there's more!

Several points here. First, there's never an excuse for running bogus headlines, and that includes -- if you have a problem with this, just go ahead and get off my lawn -- headlines based on bogus premises. Second, in case you hadn't noticed, (alleged) media malpractice is a favorite topic with the vermin press these days; if you don't want them sniping at you for being a snarky librul with no ability to interpret actual evidence, please consider the commonsense alternative of not providing them with the goddamn ammunition. Third, please stop wasting my time. The moral embarrassment that is the Trump presidency poses serious threats to a number of areas. If you're playing worst-guess scenario about matters of partisan dispute rather than -- for example -- reporting on the actual Fractious Near East itself, there is little to distinguish you from Fox News. I'd prefer that you make that distinction clearer.

I'm grateful, as I've said before, that the Post invests heavily -- in human and other capital -- in doing news. I appreciate that. Evidence-based reporting separates the sheeps from the goats, and everything we do in journalism should be built on the idea that putting genuine, actionable information in front of people is the highest and best form of the craft. Even if -- sad news, kids -- the public is in fact a bunch of morons, we should literally report, and they should literally decide.

This hed's forbidden. Here's why

Yes, it sounds all linky and clicky, but please -- three "here's why" and a "here's what"? Any objections to placing this one on the Forbidden Heds list?

And can it be a reminder of the old days? "Dies after being shot," not "killed after being shot," please. 

Leave my garage out of this

On the bright side (unlike -- could it be a year ago Wednesday?), the local paper isn't telling us not to put away the snow shovels yet. But it's still hard to see the journalistic value in telling me how to prepare for using a snow shovel, rather than estimating the likelihood that the ... oh, no.

Once again, it is not "the white stuff." It is never "the white stuff." There are no circumstances under which "the white stuff" does not place your mortal soul in danger. Shun it forever.

What about "windchill"? Not soulwise, but one word or two? You could ask what the story says, but it wouldn't help -- no mention of wind chills in the print edition. This is from the online version, which is a few grafs longer:

The average temperature this time of year is about 26 degrees, she said. Today, temperatures are in the upper teens in the Detroit area, but the wind chill makes it feel like 6 degrees.

Two words, just as the AP Stylebook has it. Though the stylebook probably would have let you figure out on your own that "6 degrees" doesn't mean "below zero."

One can only hope

Perhaps, having raised the question ("Dat's All?") upon the Wings' exit from the playoffs two months ago, someone felt obliged to answer it. Either that or we have a new data point for measuring attention spans downtown.

I'll miss Datsyuk, who was an important part of the overall cultural picture as I tried to adapt to the folkways of the new hometown. I can do without the annual welter of "Dat's" heds. On the bright side, the hed could have said "It's official: Dat's all."

The future of forbidden heds

Well, speak of the devil and he will surely sneak over and put his beer bottles in your recycling. No sooner do we learn that the Freep can start bagging its copydesk operations late next year than two -- count 'em, two -- Forbidden Heds show up on the front page.

First up, a double-dip on the Stupid Question: not just using the question mark as a hedge, but forming the question in a flagrantly ungrammatical way. Two rich dudes have declared their intent to bring a professional foopball team to town, which is fine and even newsworthy* -- but hardly raises the question of whether a franchise has been "scored." The headline's job is to tell me what happened, not what someone speculates might happen.

Regardless of the downtown back-scratching, that's not the kind of question the hed raises. You can form questions by sticking a question mark on the end of a statement, but that creates a distinctive form called an "echo question" that you might remember from "Apocalypse Now":

Lance: Hey, you know that last tab of acid I was saving? I dropped it.
Chef: You dropped acid? Far out!

That's a question, but it's very much not the same question as "Did you drop acid?" If you agree, avoid getting them mixed up in headlines ever again.

That's a "grammar" thing. "It's official" is just a cliche. You may remove it from any lede, or any subsequent graf, with no effect on the meaning. And that means you may never try to improve on a story by putting "it's official" in a hed. There are no exceptions -- no matter how important you think the story is, no matter how few times in your life you've seem "it's official." Just never.

What will hubbing do to the Great Cliches? I don't know, but if someone wants to stake that out as a research agenda, I'd really like to see the results. We've known for a while (I hope) that there's only so much mileage in being local. If the outsourced desk in Bangalore looks at a map while editing and you don't, they're going to catch a mistake you might miss. Will a centralized desk enforce chainwide rules against cliches in headlines, even if that's the suggestion from the originating paper? Or will a plague of "Christmas came early" break out of containment and spread all the faster?

I'd like to know, but I'd actually just rather have a local copydesk to complain about.

* Although it skates awfully close to Elongated Yellow Fruit territory when the perps are "the Michigan-bred businessmen" and "the Michigan State graduates" in the first two grafs

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh

Sad it was to see the Red Wings bounced from the playoffs before the last frost of the spring (and before the Superior Fish folks even got the "Octopi Supply" sign unrolled). Sadder still to think of Pavel Datsyuk packing for home with a year left on his contract. Saddest of all, though: Someone downtown still thinks a "Dat's" hed is worth the top of the sports front.

They're called Forbidden Heds for a reason, you know.

(And yes, traditionally, it'd be nice to have the shutout and the goal "send" the Wings home, rather than "sends.")

Wasn't that Superman's father?

if you're scoring along at home, yes. Dumb plays on people's names are still forbidden, even in the party press.

Those rules of hed writing

Three things to remember when you think you've written a headline:

1) Can you tell why today is different from yesterday?
2) Can you tell who did what to whom?
3) If it's the first thing that came to mind, lie down and wait for a second thing to come to mind.

File "Holy NP, Batman" with "Christmas came early" and its friends, forever.

The forbidden hed

Q: Having just indulged in one of the Great Cliches on Friday, is there a way you could possibly make it worse upon elevating it to the frontpage display type on Sunday?
A: Actually, there are several! You could, for example, make the meter even clunkier. You could insert a random comma in the "oh my!" part. You could even -- not wanting to spend precious creative time looking up whether commas go inside or outside quotation marks -- try it both ways!

It's hard to emphasize this rule of hed writing too often: If it's the first thing that comes to mind, lie down and wait for a second thing to come to mind. It's certainly hard to imagine why anyone would consider this a gift from the gods to a languishing hed world. The sports world, as usual, is a prime offender:

Seahawks schedule: Lions, Tigers (well, Bengals) and Bears, oh my! 

2015 MASCOT DEATHBRACKET: Dragons, Tigers and Bears, oh my

But the movie angle has appealed to others too:

Dinosaurs and ants and bears: Oh my! 

And it's still a Forbidden Hed when real animals are involved:

Fish and turkeys and bears, oh my!
 
Lions, Wolves and Bears, oh my!  Game and Fish offers seminars on large carnivores to teach safety and awareness

Lynx and Wolves and Bears, Oh My! Europe's Carnivore Resurgence

Getting the meter almost right will not save you:

Readers take on hot wings and I-4 and bears, oh, my!

... though there's some merit if you actually manage to nail it:

Texas and dildos and bears, oh my! Alcee Hastings insists Texas is 'crazy,' also bashes Florida

In general, though, this is how good you should be if you want to get away with one of the Great Cliches:

Lying and taiga and bears—oh my! Russian president lays the blame for Russian woes at the feet of the West and "fifth column" insurgents

Any questions?

Words to banish and peeves to ignore

No, not really. Actually, not at all. The only people who might have been suh-prised by this hed choice would have been the ones who didn't read Tuesday's paper:

... or  the Dec. 8 issue, or pretty much any issue during draft season or the hockey playoffs. At least "Suh-perb" works phonetically, kind of, a little bit, for what that's worth.

Funny how this coincides with the annual dose of free peevological publicity for the cousins at LSSU and their list of Banished Words. Granted, I thought it was a waste of time -- theirs, mine and that of journalism students everywhere -- for the AP gang to add "polar vortex" to the 2014 Stylebook, but that's because the best way to send "polar vortex" to the snow heap of history is to ignore it. Having never heard "cra cra" in the wild,* and having never heard "bae" at all,** I don't see the point in peeving about what Those Kids are doing when Those Kids don't seem to be doing it within earshot of the classroom or office.***

Those Grownups, on the other hand -- let's start by banning all sports heds that play off athlete's names? (Name pun heds in general need to be Foot Heads Arms Body-caliber to escape.) Everybody should already have access to the Forbidden Holiday Terms; might as well add "Are you ready for some football?" to the list. For cutlines, we have "celebrates," "shares a laugh with" and "smiles as he [VP]."

In text, anything that sounds like it should be among the Magic Phrases of Journalism: "limped into port," "flatly denied" or "told the Free Press in a wide-ranging interview." And -- has it really been more than two weeks?

No Bob Bashara, no jury deliberations.

That's what it's come to in court this week as jury deliberations in the Grosse Pointe Park man's high profile murder trial have been put on hold indefinitely because of a mysterious illness that's landed Bashara in the hospital.

Yes, Virginia, there is a War on Editing. Knock it off, you peevers, and get back on the guns.

* Like Google, my first question is: "Did you mean "cray cray"? I'd hyphenate it, too.
** Except as a proper name, which doesn't seem to be what LSSU had in mind.
*** Or of Language Czarina's, and she sees a lot more of them than I do.

Emergency hed ban: Prodigal

Comes now a request from Raleigh for a preliminary injunction against any and all uses of "Prodigal Son" in display type about LeBron James's choice of employers for next season.

So ordered. No "Prodigal Son" in heds, decks, or cutlines. Neither shalt thou write fatted calf -- nor talent (or, should it be "talents?") -- in thy body copy. And if the petitioner doesn't mind, let's throw in a ban on "Decision 2.0" and "LeBron 2.0" while we're at it.

Razz, jazz. huckle, dew, goose and straw

Say it ain't so, Old Hometown Newspaper!

If you missed the memo, write it down now: "Berry good," "berry fine" and all their friends are forever consigned to the ash heap of history. Shun them.

Life is skittles and life is beer

I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring. Don't you? The sun is shining, the birdies are singing in the trees, the toilets are exploding, and somebody downtown is struck with a burst of totally unique hedsmithing genius: The Russian dude has a funny name! Thus:

Read more »

Aw. go for the hat trick

With only one sighting on Friday morning, it looked for a bit as if we might get through the opening events with minimal "Let the games begin."

Well, silly us. Not only were the folks downtown holding it back for Saturday, but they had a "From Russia, with love" for the sports page too.

Come on, you guys. Couldn't you work an "it's official" into that downpage slot occupied by "Games officially kick off"? At least we get free curly fries with the hat trick.

Don't do this either

Just don't.

Forbidden stuff

"Battle of the bulge" is particularly associated with the beginning of the year, but it's on the Permanently Forbidden list. Shun it.

And if you're tempted to proclaim "Water, water everywhere," then ask whether there will be enough drops to drink (as "The Takeaway" just did on my public radio station)? Don't do that either.

Today in hed creativity

I suppose we should all give thanks that "gobble up" didn't seem like a stroke of genius to more papers than (so far) Columbus, Charlotte, Cleveland and the NYPost.

Sing: Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble!