4 ms·

Betteridge's Law of Headlines

175 points by pg 14y ago

1123581321 14y ago
It would be interesting to analyze a large body of headlines to see whether exist many pairings of similarly worded headlines with and without question marks.
simcop2387 14y ago
My favorite joke about this adage is that the following headline goes with it perfectly. A news editor prints a story about the adage, with the headline: Betteridge's Law of Headlines, is it true?
- dfc 14y ago
  That reminds me of a similar story about double positives that I can never remember the details of. Fortunately wikipedia came to the rescue: "During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah." [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser
palewire 14y ago
Stay up to date on this pressing issue by following my pet robot, @questionheds. https://twitter.com/#!/questionheds https://twitter.com/#!/questionheds
dfc 14y ago
"The maxim trends towards being universally true" I realize it is a little pedantic but I think it is reasonable when an encyclopedia article contains a line like that. After three or four minutes on the terrible NYT and Washington Post advanced article search I found the following: Who Will Be Next to Call Nuclear Energy Indispensable? http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/who-will-be-next-to-call-nuclear-energy-indispensable/?scp=6&sq=&st=nyt http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/who-will-be-n... Who Made Those Fingerprints? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/who-made-those-fingerprints.html?_r=1&scp=10&sq=&st=nyt http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/who-made-those-fi... When Should Juvenile Offenders Receive Life Sentences? http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/when-should-juvenile-offenders-receive-life-sentences/?scp=1&sq=&st=nyt http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/when-should-juv... Who Should Teach Our Children? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-should-teach-our-children/?scp=15&sq=&st=nyt http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-should-t... What is IPv6 and Why Does It Matter? http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-is-ipv6-and-why-does-it-matter/2012/06/06/gJQAbClTIV_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-is-ip... In light of a comment about NYT / Washington Post being off topic to HN and or scoped to assertions only: Is It Worth It Being Wise? http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html Could VC Be a Casualty of the Recession? http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html
- georgiabiker2 14y ago
  He should have said any headline that is a yes or no question.
  - dools 14y ago
    That wouldn't have been as good a headline.
  - jere 14y ago
    That's implied in the law: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'". If it wasn't a yes/no question, you couldn't reasonably answer "no".
- coderdude 14y ago
  Given how often these light and frothy publications appear on HN you would think that they have their fingers on the pulse of the "hacker community."
  - dfc 14y ago
    I am not sure what you are talking about?
    - coderdude 14y ago
      I'm using this as an opportunity to complain about seeing the NYT and friends on here so often. This is somewhat related to the fact that they also have vote-bait headlines.
      - dfc 14y ago
        That is what I was guessing you meant, but I have never heard anyone say the NYT or Washington Post were frothy examples of newspapers. And it did not seem relevant because the wikipedia page that pg submitted is not expressly about HN culture. However in order to cover all my bases I added two of pg's own essay titles/headlines to the list to make sure it meets your HN notability requirements.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jiggy2011 14y ago
This is especially true of British tabloids, in particular the Daily Mail. I often find it interesting to read the headline and then the final paragraph of the article text. For example headline: "X causes Y" Final paragraph: "No links were found between X and Y"
- dfc 14y ago
  As an American I was wondering about non EN-US language headlines. Can anyone comment on non-english language publications?
  - perlgeek 14y ago
    I can't remember seeing any headlines phrased as questions in any credible German news paper (there's one on 'Sun' level named 'Bild' which I refuse to read, so no comment on that). There are also some weekly news papers which sometimes contain longer opinion pieces; those might have question marks in their headlines, but usually they aren't too sensationalist.
noibl 14y ago
For a laugh, I've made a userscript[1] that highlights (lowlights really) HN headlines that conform to this law. The result looks like this: http://testing321.netau.net/betteridge-sample.png http://testing321.netau.net/betteridge-sample.png Improvements welcome, especially if instructive. :) [1] https://gist.github.com/2908570/ https://gist.github.com/2908570/ [Chrome: drag 'raw' link to omnibox to install] [Based on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934937 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934937]
- shabda 14y ago
  Will this userscript stop people from posting linkbait articles?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Sounds like a great title for a new blog entry. Does Betteridge's Law apply all of the time? Obviously this is true about factual reporting -- the real law seems to be making a judgment on the supportability of the facts, which is only important when you are doing factual reporting. If you are doing analysis, many times the entire purpose is to answer some tough question, so having a head with a question mark makes sense. Also note that if you couldn't answer the question with a "no" then there wouldn't be much point in doing the analysis in the first place. Many times the nature of these stories are such that you could call it either way, and what the editor wants is for you to go research it and make the best guess you can. That's a fair type of analysis article Note the I believe analysis and commentary articles should be clearly-marked and set aside from normal reporting. What I see a lot of -- in major media outlets -- is analysis pieces masquerading as news stories. From bloggers I see a lot of half-baked opinion pieces with question mark heads where the blogger basically just throws a couple of facts out and waves his hands around some, hoping to stir up a fight. It's true that question marks in headlines are a warning sign, but it's a heuristic, not a law.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
gjm11 14y ago
The usual phrasing of the law is nice and snappy, but I think one of the examples in the Wikipedia article -- "Can the middle class be saved?" -- demonstrates that the right formulation is something like this: If a headline is in the form of a question, the right answer is almost certainly whatever answer is least surprising. If you see a headline along the lines of "Did we really evolve from apes?", "Does the earth still go round the sun?", "Can humanity survive?", etc., it probably means that some crackpottish idea has come up that would make the answer "no", and that the headline writer knows that actually endorsing it would be a step too far.
Sambdala 14y ago
It seems most fear-mongering in the media is phrased this way. "Coming up at 11. Are children being killed by breastfeeding?!"
- cheatercheater 14y ago
  upvote for humour.
JadeNB 14y ago
Obligatory Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075.

175 points by pg 14y ago

It would be interesting to analyze a large body of headlines to see whether exist many pairings of similarly worded headlines with and without question marks.

simcop2387 14y ago

My favorite joke about this adage is that the following headline goes with it perfectly. A news editor prints a story about the adage, with the headline: Betteridge's Law of Headlines, is it true?

dfc 14y ago
That reminds me of a similar story about double positives that I can never remember the details of. Fortunately wikipedia came to the rescue: "During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah." [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser

palewire 14y ago

Stay up to date on this pressing issue by following my pet robot, @questionheds. https://twitter.com/#!/questionheds https://twitter.com/#!/questionheds

dfc 14y ago

"The maxim trends towards being universally true" I realize it is a little pedantic but I think it is reasonable when an encyclopedia article contains a line like that. After three or four minutes on the terrible NYT and Washington Post advanced article search I found the following: Who Will Be Next to Call Nuclear Energy Indispensable? http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/who-will-be-next-to-call-nuclear-energy-indispensable/?scp=6&sq=&st=nyt http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/who-will-be-n... Who Made Those Fingerprints? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/who-made-those-fingerprints.html?_r=1&scp=10&sq=&st=nyt http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/who-made-those-fi... When Should Juvenile Offenders Receive Life Sentences? http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/when-should-juvenile-offenders-receive-life-sentences/?scp=1&sq=&st=nyt http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/when-should-juv... Who Should Teach Our Children? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-should-teach-our-children/?scp=15&sq=&st=nyt http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-should-t... What is IPv6 and Why Does It Matter? http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-is-ipv6-and-why-does-it-matter/2012/06/06/gJQAbClTIV_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-is-ip... In light of a comment about NYT / Washington Post being off topic to HN and or scoped to assertions only: Is It Worth It Being Wise? http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html Could VC Be a Casualty of the Recession? http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html

georgiabiker2 14y ago
He should have said any headline that is a yes or no question.
- dools 14y ago
  That wouldn't have been as good a headline.
- jere 14y ago
  That's implied in the law: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'". If it wasn't a yes/no question, you couldn't reasonably answer "no".
coderdude 14y ago
Given how often these light and frothy publications appear on HN you would think that they have their fingers on the pulse of the "hacker community."
- dfc 14y ago
  I am not sure what you are talking about?
  - coderdude 14y ago
    I'm using this as an opportunity to complain about seeing the NYT and friends on here so often. This is somewhat related to the fact that they also have vote-bait headlines.
    - dfc 14y ago
      That is what I was guessing you meant, but I have never heard anyone say the NYT or Washington Post were frothy examples of newspapers. And it did not seem relevant because the wikipedia page that pg submitted is not expressly about HN culture. However in order to cover all my bases I added two of pg's own essay titles/headlines to the list to make sure it meets your HN notability requirements.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jiggy2011 14y ago

This is especially true of British tabloids, in particular the Daily Mail. I often find it interesting to read the headline and then the final paragraph of the article text. For example headline: "X causes Y" Final paragraph: "No links were found between X and Y"

dfc 14y ago
As an American I was wondering about non EN-US language headlines. Can anyone comment on non-english language publications?
- perlgeek 14y ago
  I can't remember seeing any headlines phrased as questions in any credible German news paper (there's one on 'Sun' level named 'Bild' which I refuse to read, so no comment on that). There are also some weekly news papers which sometimes contain longer opinion pieces; those might have question marks in their headlines, but usually they aren't too sensationalist.

noibl 14y ago

For a laugh, I've made a userscript[1] that highlights (lowlights really) HN headlines that conform to this law. The result looks like this: http://testing321.netau.net/betteridge-sample.png http://testing321.netau.net/betteridge-sample.png Improvements welcome, especially if instructive. :) [1] https://gist.github.com/2908570/ https://gist.github.com/2908570/ [Chrome: drag 'raw' link to omnibox to install] [Based on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934937 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934937]

shabda 14y ago
Will this userscript stop people from posting linkbait articles?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Sounds like a great title for a new blog entry. Does Betteridge's Law apply all of the time? Obviously this is true about factual reporting -- the real law seems to be making a judgment on the supportability of the facts, which is only important when you are doing factual reporting. If you are doing analysis, many times the entire purpose is to answer some tough question, so having a head with a question mark makes sense. Also note that if you couldn't answer the question with a "no" then there wouldn't be much point in doing the analysis in the first place. Many times the nature of these stories are such that you could call it either way, and what the editor wants is for you to go research it and make the best guess you can. That's a fair type of analysis article Note the I believe analysis and commentary articles should be clearly-marked and set aside from normal reporting. What I see a lot of -- in major media outlets -- is analysis pieces masquerading as news stories. From bloggers I see a lot of half-baked opinion pieces with question mark heads where the blogger basically just throws a couple of facts out and waves his hands around some, hoping to stir up a fight. It's true that question marks in headlines are a warning sign, but it's a heuristic, not a law.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

gjm11 14y ago

The usual phrasing of the law is nice and snappy, but I think one of the examples in the Wikipedia article -- "Can the middle class be saved?" -- demonstrates that the right formulation is something like this: If a headline is in the form of a question, the right answer is almost certainly whatever answer is least surprising. If you see a headline along the lines of "Did we really evolve from apes?", "Does the earth still go round the sun?", "Can humanity survive?", etc., it probably means that some crackpottish idea has come up that would make the answer "no", and that the headline writer knows that actually endorsing it would be a step too far.

Sambdala 14y ago

It seems most fear-mongering in the media is phrased this way. "Coming up at 11. Are children being killed by breastfeeding?!"

cheatercheater 14y ago
upvote for humour.

JadeNB 14y ago

Obligatory Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075.