What do you make of the following BBC News headline:
Man convicted of murdering his girlfriend and their 10-month-old daughter at Winchester Crown Court
Is it just me, or does this read as if the murders were committed at the court?
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13Squad helps dog bite victim. – RegDwigнt Nov 30 '10 at 18:25
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11Two sisters reunite after eighteen years at checkout counter – mmyers Nov 30 '10 at 18:25
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5Wait, so the murders weren't committed at Winchester Crown Court? – Marthaª Nov 30 '10 at 18:50
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2Sometimes I think that the BBC staff quite likes trying to sneak little grammatical jokes into the fix. They're pretty good at subversive picture captions, too. – thesunneversets Nov 30 '10 at 20:54
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8The proper name for these is "crash blossoms": http://www.crashblossoms.com/ – JSBձոգչ Nov 30 '10 at 21:03
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2Well this is the Eats, Shoots and Leaves thing isn't it? – Orbling Nov 30 '10 at 22:04
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2Police murder suspect in court. – ShreevatsaR Sep 01 '11 at 02:54
3 Answers
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Yes. The meaning is understood, but a decent editor would have dropped the place reference from the headline. It adds nothing and introduces ambiguity.
To recast the sentence for clarity, I would suggest:
Man convicted at Winchester Crown Court of murdering his girlfriend and their 10-month-old daughter
That puts the money words ("murdering" "girlfriend" "daughter") at too far a remove from the beginning of the headline, however, so it is easy to see why the editor chose to put the place reference at the end. As I say, however, this information seems to belong more in body copy than in a headline.
Robusto
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1But that puts "murder", an even better attention grabber than "convicted", farther from the beginning of the page. Grammar loses to marketing. – Sparr Dec 01 '10 at 00:28
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We could argue about the best way to phrase the headline. I merely offered one idea. Still, one could argue that the man was not legally a murderer until convicted. Moreover, if you use up that provocative word as a noun, what are you going to use for the much more important verb? "Murderer convicted ... of killing ... "? Sounds anticlimactic to me. – Robusto Dec 01 '10 at 00:35
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I agree with Sparr that "Man convicted of murdering…" is more attention-holding than "Man convicted at Winchester Crown Court…". If you could use "murderer", then of course you could write "Murderer of girlfriend and 10-month-old daughter convicted at Winchester Crown Court", which is perhaps even better. – ShreevatsaR Sep 01 '11 at 02:57
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Another possible headline would be "Winchester Crown Court convicts man of murdering his girlfriend and their 10-month-old daughter". I agree, though, that mentioning the court at all seems quite unnecessary.
Hellion
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No, you and many other people choose to ignore the rules of implicature. and wilfully misinterpret the sentence, for comic effect.
Colin Fine
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