On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 15:51, <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 03:11:28PM +0000, Frank Wales wrote: >> So, am I supposed to conclude that: >> >> > 43.2 Floods body is missing policeman >> >> is noticeably easier to read than: >> >> > 22.6 Whisky body backs safe drinking > > Well, use of the word "body" is less ambiguous in the first > headline. Also, if I knew nothing about the stories I could > conclude that a policeman, who had been missing, had drowned > in floods and his body been discovered. However I don't know > anything about a "whisky body" and I can't guess at what it > means other than a group of either whisky drinkers or > distillers? I would have to read that story to understand it. > Also, what is "safe drinking" - is drinking ever "safe"? etc.
Reading those specific headlines, my initial assumption while reading the first one was to take “floods body” as the entity (e.g., the Environment Agency), which I would have to mentally correct to “body found in floods…”. That headline is initially ambiguous because in that context the term “Floods body” could mean either, and indeed would more likely refer to an organisation than an individual (e.g., a debate about funding or flood defences). In contrast, I wouldn’t ever think that “Whisky body” was anything other than a group of people connected to whisky production or drinking. Whether there’s such a thing as “safe drinking” isn’t necessary in order to parse the headline. I’d contend that in terms of sheer readability of the headlines, the floods one is far worse—in that it takes far more effort, but having successfully parsed both, I’d have a reasonable idea of what both stories relate to (enough for me to decide whether to read them or not). M. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
