Media mistakes

gomezz said:
I know I misread what this was saying but not sure the hyphen makes it totally clear what was meant.
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Without the hyphen it could suggest that CC scientists are responsible for deadly weather. They may be responsible for the hype, but not the deadly weather. I'd have written "Scientists claim deadliest..." Probably too wordy for a headline. If word count a problem then the hyphen seems a reasonable compromise (to me).
 
Instead of the hyphen put "say scientists". The word scientists on its own after the hyphen doesn't really mean anything.
 
Black Hole said:
That's exactly what I was about to say – it's not a hyphen.
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Whether it's supposed to be a hyphen, em-dash or en-dash, chances are it will be the same symbol. I'm lazy and just use the "-" on the keyboard. Sloppily, I referred to a hyphen because gomezz did.
Wildebeest said:
It does seem to be a commonly used shorthand in headlines.
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So much so that I couldn't really see it as a mistake, but I replied anyway.:oops:
 
EEPhil said:
Whether it's supposed to be a hyphen, em-dash or en-dash, chances are it will be the same symbol.
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Sure, but with spaces separating it, it shouldn't be interpreted as a hyphen even if the hyphen glyph has been used in the typography.

A hyphen specifically connects words with prefixes and suffixes. Dashes denote pauses, which may be interpreted (in this case) as a pause and therefore adding a footnote. If a hyphen character is used as a dash, it is a stand-in where the typographer doesn't know, doesn't care, or has no dashes available in his font (see https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/inserting-special-characters-into-forum-posts.11308/)..

But I don't like the way headline writers contract things. I've seen commas used to replace "and" or "or", and it can be unclear which is meant.
 
Black Hole said:
But I don't like the way headline writers contract things. I've seen commas used to replace "and" or "or", and it can be unclear which is meant.
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I agree things can be unclear. Newspapers (paper ones) have limited space and so the headline writers sometimes take liberties. It wouldn't surprise me if they write the headline and story for the print version and just insert it into the online page to keep costs down. (The BBC do that with the red button text leading to half-stories and references to non-existant pictures).

Where would the fun be if we couldn't point out the ambiguity in headlines?
 
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