Meaningless headlines? It’s not just me – @economist #Writing

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The Economist eases my troubled mind. It seems I’m not alone in failing to make sense of so many newspaper headlines.

“Keeping the font big means omitting many of those little function words: “the”, “a”, “and”, prepositions and the like. But these words, despite their small size, have an outsize importance: they convey the who-did-what-to-whom of the content words by providing structure and context.”

The article also reminds us of George Orwell’s maxim:

“Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

Read the full column, here.

Photo by Marco Djallo on Unsplash