4 ms·
What role does the "this" at the beginning of the title play? I actually thought it said "the" at first scan.
by version_five 5y ago
What role does the "this" at the beginning of the title play? I actually thought it said "the" at first scan.
- dmd 5y agoThe word "this" is used to identify a specific person or thing close at hand or being referred to (in this case, a specific influenza lineage). If the word "the" were used instead, the headline wouldn't make sense.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bawolff 5y agoPersonally i think using "An" would be better than "this" or nothing at all, but i also think this entire thread is very nitpicky.
- genericone 5y agoGood point, the title of the article is: "Influenza lineage extinction during the COVID-19 pandemic?", I don't know how the HN headline came to be ("This influenza lineage may have become extinct"), but it does seem like a very very light form of clickbait.
- perihelions 5y agoIt's a quote from the abstract. I found "influenza lineage extinction" difficult to parse, but the abstract expands it into clear English. >"In particular, the B/Yamagata lineage has not been isolated from April 2020 to August 2021, suggesting that this influenza lineage may have become extinct,"
- MaxBarraclough 5y agoSo I'm not the only one who notices this. The unnecessary this prefix strikes me as a sort of clickbait-adjacent red flag. I'm fairly sure it wasn't anywhere near this common 10 years ago.
- throwaway832939 5y agoOften with a short follow-on sentence in the format: This article is clickbait. Here's why.