Saturday, January 24, 2009

Neglected to death by the steam

Interesting way of trying to sum up the charges, but -- no. People can be beaten, shot or stabbed to death, but I'm not at all sure they can be ignored to death.

6 Comments:

Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

But "neglect" is deeper than "ignore", isn't it? At any rate, I'm not sure I'd say this, but it doesn't bother me in a headline.

1:13 PM, January 24, 2009  
Blogger Wishydig said...

how about "fatally neglected"

"lost a long battle with neglect"?

well maybe not in the hed...

2:43 PM, January 24, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The story sounds as if he let mom starve to death, so how about "Son let mom -- starve as he -- spent her checks" that count might not work, but at least it's not wordicide.

5:31 PM, January 24, 2009  
Blogger fev said...

Yeah, I think that's getting at what I was concerned about. All the "[verb] to death" cases I could think of involve doing something. I'm glitching on the idea that you can verb someone to death by _not_ doing something.

"Lost a long battle with neglect" would be a really interesting case of hed writing, wouldn't it?

6:50 PM, January 24, 2009  
Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

It's not doing something you should be doing, though, not just not doing something. That's why it's not called "criminal ignoring"... I mean, I do see your point, but I see the headline writer's point, too. Son killed mom. How to say it is the problem.

8:02 PM, January 24, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps

'Woman, 73, killed by son's neglect.'

'Woman, 73, died from son's neglect'

but is it also possible that 'neglected to death' is direct quotation?

-thomas

4:34 AM, January 25, 2009  

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