NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ARE an unfailing source of pleasure for language mavens, because of the howlers they commit in their desire for brevity. An assortment of amusing ambiguities result from headline-writers omitting crucial verbs and punctuation marks to save space.
Among the most famous of these was the Japan Today headline 'Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms'for an article about how a musician, whose father died in a Japan Airlines plane crash, was now flourishing.
But the phrasing of the headline led a testy copy editor to wonder, 'what's a crash blossom?' The phrase caught on in the esoteric world of copy editors, till 'crash blossoms' stuck as the term of art for all headlines that could be misread.
Legendary headlines from the colorful history of newspaper disasters include 'Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim' (a hyphen between dog and bite might have helped!), 'Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge' ('delays' instead of 'holds up' would have worked better) and 'MacArthur Flies Back to Front' (the general was returning by plane to the war front perhaps less economical phrasing could have prevented the hilarity that greeted this headline).
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