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Sometimes headlines take me a few seconds to parse because of excessive "negatives"; this one has three: surveillance bad -> oversight good -> gut bad -> withdr
by alanbernstein 5y ago
Sometimes headlines take me a few seconds to parse because of excessive "negatives"; this one has three: surveillance bad -> oversight good -> gut bad -> withdraw good. That's probably the most I've seen in a headline of this length. Just a totally off topic observation.
- dangerwill 5y agoThis headline is entirely straightforward ...
- stavros 5y agoYou mean they withdrew the proposal to remove the words that complicated the headline.
- alanbernstein 5y agoFor a headline, sure. It's about a sequence of four events, and they're packed into nearly the most terse statement possible - it's well understood that this is the main job of a headline. But they're in nearly reverse chronological order, so by the time I reach the third event, my brain starts stumbling trying to figure out what the statement is actually about. If you don't have any context, it's almost completely backwards. Rewriting it with comprehension as the goal, you would get something like this: The city surveillance program was subject to an oversight law, and Mayor Breed proposed gutting this law, but then withdrew the proposal. Which, of course, would be a terrible headline, because it includes punctuation.
- hugh-avherald 5y agoDoesn't help that "Breed" is also a verb. (Headlines are often in title case. Took me two passes to realize it wasn't.)
- jl34jkt 5y ago