Sunday, March 25, 2018

We are Siamese if you don't please

It can't be a good idea to encourage too much sympathy for those who take Fox's shilling, but -- do spare a moment's thought for the reporter who drew the short straw Sunday night and had to write about the "60 Minutes" interview. You can certainly forgive the occasional biscuit conditional ("... or 4 degrees Celsius if you're in Windsor").

If true, Trump would have been married a little more than a year to Melania. Their son, Barron, would have been four months old.

Clearly the writer has bigger things to think about.

I'm not sure how to count the next one, unless one party or the other ages at a different rate from the normal Earth year:

Needless to say, these aren't the only elements of interest in Fox's coverage. The noninverted question hed is unusual, and Fox hardly seems to have covered the Daniels matter enough for her to be "Stormy" in a headline. It should be an interesting few days if you're in Windsor.

Labels: ,

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day

Headlines 'round the world continue to march to the music that only their creators hear. I'm tempted at first glance to call the BBC example above a noun pile, except that it isn't one. It doesn't stack nouns up to modify each other (as in "Bannon Congress Trump Russia hearing row"*); it just throws some nouns at the wall to see if they stick.

Drudge, as usual, simply does stuff that Drudge readers appear to have come to expect:


* Or  "Palestinian viral slap video teen," downpage.

Labels: , , ,

Thursday, November 02, 2017

Diagramming party to action stations

If you were having trouble telling who did what to (how many of) whom from the hed, wait until you get to the Fair 'n' Balanced lede:
 
A man charged with fatally stabbing and shooting a popular Ohio middle school teacher was engaged to her daughter and a pallbearer at her funeral, officials said Tuesday.

The local Fox affiliate provided an example for your editing midterm:

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio -  Strongsville Police Chief Mark Fender announced Tuesday that 20-year-old Jeffrey Scullin, the fiance of murder victim Melinda Pleskovic's daughter, has been arrested in her death.

... while the AP seems to have kept its eye on the ball:

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio — A man charged with fatally stabbing and shooting a popular middle school teacher was engaged to her daughter, police said Tuesday.

 That's Fox for you. Come for the paranoia, stay for the diagramming.

Labels: , , ,

Monday, May 30, 2016

Find the noun!

"Doc shows" as in "Ben Casey"? Or would you rather just read the story, rather than trying to figure out what the Drudge version means?

"Murder" being a law thing rather than a grammar thing, I'll leave the current top story to others:
 

Labels: , , ,