Assorted headline musings

23 killed after turboprop crashes near Caspian Sea
What'd they do, line the survivors up and shoot them? You could say "23 killed in crash," you could say "23 dead after turboprop crashes," you could say "Plane crashes; 23 dead" -- there's rather a lot you could say. But prepositions mean stuff. Don't fling them around at random.

Worship, fellowship, outreach grace holiday calendars
Amid the hundreds of services and sacred events gracing the calendar this weekend in the area, some Christmas highlights:
Grr. Copyeds, your job is to keep writers' religious biases out of stories -- not to amplify them in big type. No more "gracing the calendar."

’Tis the season for mall mayhem
Every time a "'Tis the season" hed appears, an angel is blindfolded and secretly flown to some country ending in -stan where "cruel and unusual punishment" is not a constitutional no-no but a varsity and club-level sport. Are we listening over there at Vox?

Adverbs gone wild II: Executing the survivors

Here's one of those interchangeable-time things I was hoping for an example of:

Man dies after being struck by car
An 18-year-old-man* was killed in southwest Detroit on Saturday night after he was deliberately struck by a car on Michigan Avenue following an argument.

Glitch much? It makes perfect sense to say he died after being hit by the car, but dying after an accident and being killed after an accident aren't quite the same thing. Hence the classic rescue-'em-and-shoot-'em hed from a few years back:

23 killed after turboprop crashes near Caspian Sea

The operating principle seems to be that time adverbs have a conjunctive sense -- A has something to do with B -- that overrides their time sense, partly driven by the widespread journalistic fear of saying something the same way twice. Here are a few more examples from recent days, both with an after/when swap from hed to lede:

Police: Woman killed after her car hits another, then overturns
Police said a North Carolina woman was killed Monday morning when her car sideswiped a vehicle, then hit another car, causing a chain reaction before overturning on First Colonial Road. (Virginian-Pilot, 4/28)

Uniontown man killed after motorcycle crash in Saltlick
A 74-year-old Uniontown man was killed Saturday afternoon when his motorcycle collided with a pick-up in Saltlick, state police at Uniontown reported. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 4/27)

Why not use "dies" for "(is) killed" in the heds? We don't even have the Elongated Yellow Fruit Syndrome to blame.

I don't think this particular bit of confusion is a long-term threat to democracy or free speech, and it probably isn't even too confusing for too awfully long. Still, it's a really strange habit to be so persistent in a trade that prides itself on its Guardianship of The Language. Makes you wonder whether we're wasting our effort holding the which/that line, doesn't it?

* Don't mind the hypenation; it's more or less random at the Freep these days.