Grammar Moses: In headline writing, leave room for logic

A pair of letter writers this week reminded me that not everyone on this planet was trained to write headlines.

Hollywood, which rarely offers an accurate portrayal of a newsroom, doesn't know how headlines work, either.

In movies, you'll see complete sentences in heavy bold type that half fill a front page of a prop newspaper. I understand that in prop papers there is only one headline on the page that helps propel the plot, but to make "FINGERPRINTS FROM THE ESTRANGED WIDOW OF WEALTHY INDUSTRIALIST SILAS MCGREEDY ARE FOUND ON A SERRATED BREAD KNIFE" a 120-point headline is rather silly.

Space is precious. That's just isn't how it works in the real world.

I've mentioned before that in headlines we almost never use complete sentences, unless they are downsized secondary headlines. We abbreviate our thoughts and drop articles, punctuation and verbs with élan.

We're conveying the idea of a sentence.

Bucking that trend in Hollywood, of course, is Variety magazine.

An oft-cited all-caps screamer across the top of Variety in 1935 read: "STICKS NIX HICK PIX."

The story was about how people in rural America tend to reject movies about farmers.

Seems to me the phrase might be a riff on "Will it play in Peoria?" which, itself, was a paraphrase of dialogue in a Horatio Alger book from the previous century.

While clever, the Variety headline is difficult to interpret and requires you to read the accompanying story.

If there were a World Wide Web in 1935, this would be the granddaddy of clickbait headlines.

I think our headlines are considerably more understandable.

Still, I do get questions from time to time.

Joan Graef wrote with a suggestion on how to improve on the headline "AP sources: Justice Breyer to retire; Biden to fill vacancy."

She argued this headline makes it look like President Biden would be accepting an appointment to the Supreme Court rather than making an appointment.

Hey, the Supreme Court has better job security and fewer sartorial demands than the presidency, so that's not the worst idea I've heard.

Joan's suggestion was to make it "AP source: Justice Breyer to retire; Biden will appoint to fill vacancy."

The problem with that headline is its length. We don't want to look like a Hollywood prop, after all.

And logically speaking, Biden couldn't appoint himself to the high court.

Here is another example from Barb Chrisman: "I was reading the Herald and saw this headline in the Healthy You insert - 'How to boost your chances with virus.' I had to reread this several times because to me it meant boosting chances to get the virus. Toward the end of the article, in bold, it said, 'How to boost your immune system.' So that's what it was about. Was there a better headline that could have been used to eliminate the confusion?"

Headlines are tricky, Barb. Because of space constraints, we need to convey the point of a story in few characters and we also need to entice readers to look beyond the headline. So we rely on people to use logic to fill in some blanks.

"How to boost your chances with virus" could be the headline for an advice column about how to woo a virus. But how logical is that?

"How to boost your immune system" is much more nebulous. It could be a vitamin advertisement, a pitch for an exercise program or an advice column urging you to avoid chemotherapy.

The keyword "virus" these days tells you in five characters the story is about COVID-19 and its motley crew of variants. It should be understood that this newspaper would not encourage you to find ways to cozy up to this virus.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's new book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at

grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.