I am russian and study english language. Watching MSM on youtube, I saw such headline "Russia to Halt Gas Deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria". I am apolitical guy, therefore this headline refers to the rules of english only. Could anyone give a link or just explain what construction "subject + to + infinitive" means?
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1I'm pretty sure this is a duplicate, and this question has been asked many times here before, but it's hard to search for because of the extremely common words (to, infinitive, verb.) – stangdon May 18 '22 at 13:03
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This is headlinese, which often omits little words such as articles and the copula.
A form of that in normal English grammar would be Russia is to halt gas deliveries..., which is one of the ways of expressing an intention.
Colin Fine
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@Astralbee not sure what you have against Colin Fine or why you keep posting comments like this all over. I can assure you it is annoying to see everywhere and not helpful, and I'm not sure what your purpose is. If you have a vendetta against this user, please pursue it in private, not in the comments section on his answers. – Esther May 18 '22 at 18:40
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What you saw is a 'headline'. These appear in large type at the top of newspaper stories, and as headings over online news stories. It is desirable for them to take up as little space as possible, and so for this reason, unnecessary words are omitted. These can include verbs and articles. The term 'headlinese' is often used when discussing this style of writing. A headline does not have to comprise a grammatical sentence.
Short words are preferred to long ones:
The grandest, oldest and arguably finest headline tradition of all, of course, is the use of short words. Instead of disagreeing, people 'clash.' Rather than competing, they 'vie.' Instead of divisions, we have 'rifts.' And instead of a Mexico president promising reforms of the policing system in an effort to mollify people’s anger over the murder of 43 students, we get 'Mexico president vows police reform in bid to quell massacre rage.' I was inordinately pleased with myself for coining the word thinnernym to describe these short words, although I’ve since been informed that I’m not the first to do so.
Andy Bodle, "Sub Ire as Hacks Slash Word Length: Getting the Skinny on Thinnernyms." The Guardian, Dec. 4, 2014.
Sometimes nouns are 'stacked', which seems, according to one writer, to be an increasing trend:
A string of unleavened nouns will form a whole headline. Three nouns stuck cheek by jowl was once the limit, but now four is standard. Some months ago two tabloids gave their front pages to SCHOOL COACH CRASH DRAMA and SCHOOL OUTING COACH HORROR and a week or two later one of them achieved five with SCHOOL BUS BELTS SAFETY VICTORY. There is some loss of seriousness here, as if anyone cared.
Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage. HarperCollins, 1997.
Sometimes careless or hurried headline writing can lead to unintentional ambiguity, often of a kind that provokes amusement: 'Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans', 'Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim' and 'Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge'.
Michael Harvey
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