Grammar Moses: Give me a break - a good break

I've had a few bad breaks in my day.

I'm talking of headlines, of course.

I can't cite any specific examples, however, because once a copy editor suffers the humiliation of a really bad headline break he or she is unlikely to make another anytime soon.

A "bad break" in newspaper parlance is when a headline continues on another line in an awkward way, splitting up a thought and creating a new, unintended meaning.

For those of you who rush to the last page of your Consumer Reports magazine to see the product labeling gaffes the magazine staff has collected (I have done that since my dad started subscribing), the Columbia Journalism Review does the same with headlines they assume editors wish they could take back.

Here are a few examples cited by CJR:

"Potential witness

to murder drunk"

"Child teaching

expert to speak"

"Man shot in back,

head found in street"

Headline writing is an art. Because we often have small windows in which to convey the angle of a story, we don't use full sentences. We scrimp on articles and conjunctions and hope you understand what we're saying.

Really bad breaks are as scarce as platypuses, at least in the newspapers I read. All three examples above are decades old and from newspapers you probably have never heard of. Yet all three examples are rib ticklers still.

Bad breaks change adjectives to verbs, creating all sorts of havoc.

In my first example, a "potential witness to murder" was drunk. But with the bad break, the witness murders a drunk.

In the second, a "child teaching expert" is going to speak. With the bad break, a child is teaching an expert to speak.

In the third, my favorite, the headline writer broke up the list "back, head." While I haven't read the story, I'd lay odds that the poor guy's body was found in one piece.

This is why one-column headlines can be so hard to write. Especially when the story is about something happening in South Barrington, Carpentersville or Lake in the Hills. Try fitting one of those town names on a single line.

The first rule of copy editing should be to never break a number. Consider this:

"Concert costs $16

million to stage"

Back in high school, a concert ticket did cost about $16. But that's not what this headline is about.

Not quite clear

Margaret Kaden of Arlington Heights emailed me a photo she shot of a sign posted at Harper College in Palatine.

It's a prime example of how difficult it is to write a one-column, four-deck headline.

It could be interpreted as an admonition not to smoke in the presence of children.

Or it could be interpreted to mean that there are no cigarette-smoking children in the vicinity.

My money is on the former.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.