Case in point, look at the headlines below and see why they can be taken two ways. That means the readers are likely to take the headline the wrong way. That’s what makes it funny.
Include your children when baking cookies.
Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers.
Safety experts say school bus passengers should be belted.
Drunk gets nine months in violin case.
Survivor of Siamese tweens joins parents.
Farmer Bill dies in house.
Iraqi head seeks arms.
British left waffles on Falkland Islands.
Lung cancer in women mushrooms.
Eye drops off shelf.
Teacher strikes idle kids.
Squad helps dog bite victim.
Enraged cow injures farmer with ax.
Plane too close to ground, crash probe told.
Miners refuse to work after death.
Juvenile court to try shooting defendant.
Two Soviet ships collide, one dies.
Killer sentenced to die for second time in 10 years.
Cold waves are linked to temperatures.
Enfield couple slain, police suspect homicide
Red tape holds up new bridge.
Deer kill 17,000
Typhoon rips through cemetery, hundreds dead.
Man struck by lightning faces battery charge.
New study of obesity looks for larger test group.
Chief throws his heart into helping feed needy.
Arson suspect is held in Massachusetts fire.
British union finds dwarfs in short supply.
Lansing residents can drop off trees.
Local high school dropouts cut in half.
New vaccine may contain Rabies.
Deaf college opens doors to hearing.
Air head fired.
Man steals clock, faces time.
Old school pillars are replaced by Alumni.
Bank drive-in window blocked by Board.
Hospitals are sued by seven foot doctors.
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In my early days, I spent some of my nights at the newspaper writing headlines.
I never did master the art, although I worked with some of the best in the business, including Jim Wood, a former editor with Beckley Newspapers.
Whenever Jim came across a headline in a national newspaper that he thought was funny, he’d share it with the newsroom. That’s when I started to pay attention to headlines, something that I still do today.
On a big-city daily paper, a headline writer might only write a handful of headlines on any given evening. At many of the small dailies, though, a headline writer might compose as many as 100 for a Sunday edition, including the one-column, run-of-the-paper heads.
Jim could write a good headline in a few minutes and still make the counts come out even for a two-line head. It took me muchlonger to do that.
Now, headlines are measured by the computer, and there’s little problem in coming up with a decent headline. All you do is figure out what you want to say and the computer will fit it into the proper size and length for you.
The process of putting out a newspaper has changed astronomically during the past 40 years, and technology has altered the way things are done in the newsroom.
But the more newspapers change, the more they stay the same. After all, newspapers still use words for their headlines and newsprint still comes to the pressroom on rolls.
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Last year’s banner crop of actual heads really takes the cake. Sit back and enjoy the following:
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Speaking of newspapers, a feature writer did some research a few years ago and discovered that currently there are about 80 people living in the United States with the name of S. Claus, and only one person named Kris Kringle.
If Santa had one Beanie Baby toy for every kid on the planet, his sled would weigh 333,333 tons. (The world’s largest passenger ship, the Queen Mary 2 cruise liner, only weighs 150,000 tons.)
Now to pull that much weight, it would take 214,206 reindeer…plus Rudolph.
To make it to every house, Santa would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound, and make 8222.6 visits per second. The only problem with that is a reindeer traveling at that speed would burst into flames.
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   Top of the morning.