Thursday, May 28, 2009
Prissy Grammar Leech's newspaper headline laziness anger
Are our streets awash with comic book villains? Are our headline writers engaged in a process of torturing the English language? Here comes a pet peeve.
An interesting element of certain languages, among them German, Turkish and our own English, is the allowance for compound nouns. We’re all aware that in English you can string some nouns together without modifying them to give more information about the nature, location or purpose of a the final noun. You know, spider monkey, fridge magnet, Ryanair customer complaints department. It makes for a more compact construction than, for example, the Romance languages like French or Spanish, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) translates back as the Organisation of the Treaty of the North Atlantic (um, OTAN). However, this construction is open to abuse, and the constraints of news headlines, where the optimal use of each word must be exploited, can twist good, respectable, hardworking words into some truly preposterous sentences. Take this example, from the BBC: ‘Dog fouling CCTV camera crackdown’ - five nouns shunted into a chaotic pile-up from which not even the most perpendicular minds in the English language could salvage anything; too nasty a crash for JG Ballard, too much junk for William Burroughs. Really, what on earth does it mean?
But the most conspicuous example of this abuse of the opportunities afforded by compound nouns , at least for me down the years (yes, seriously), has been the inadvertent fabrication by newspapers of a legion of inept supervillains, who, just like in the comics, either come to a sticky end or are arrested. The most recent example I noticed was when I was reading The Daily Expess(again, yes, seriously) and discovered that some fiend known as Crossbow Man had been taken off the streets. From the headline one could logically assume that this was his nom de guerre; it can’t be that much of a pain for headline writers to insert the word ‘with’ between ‘man’ and ‘crossbow’ to make it clear that the crossbow was the weapon of choice of a bog standard assailant rather than the Aristotelian essence of a veteran comic book nemesis. The same can be said of Sword Man, who should be easy to distinguish from a ‘swordsman’ or ‘man with sword’ by all but the laziest of headline writers, and so, must too be a bit special with a blade in his hands, and Hammer Man, who sounds like he should be lurking in wait for you behind floating platforms and lava pits at the end of his own Megaman level.
Some of these guys are too hot for Marvel or DC Comics to touch. Pure racist evil can be found in the ethnic hatred of ne’er do wells such as Swastika Attack Woman, Nazi Salute Man and the no-nonsense brigands styling themselves as the White Hate Death Threat Men. But fortunately other supervillains are unwilling to invoke genocide and tear the patchwork of mankind apart, and so occupy the other extreme, reaching outlandish levels of speciality and banality in their evil schemes. 50 Cent Onstage Necklace Theft Man, for example, must have had a pretty lame back-story, while the Soda Pop Theft Teen was never going to recruit loyal henchmen or acquire a hideout of her own with such a piddling little foray into the world of crime. Luckily for mankind, these two went down for their crimes with few problems. In fact, they both sound so lame that the regular police were probably able to handle them without summoning Batman, who is not to be confused with ‘man with bat’, or the risible Baseball Bat Man, so puny a criminal that the courts forced him back on the streets, no doubt to do some proper damage to our society.
More versatile baddies pose a greater threat and might require more than the police to halt their evil deeds. We are fortunate that Arson Man, not to be confused with Fire Man or a fireman, was undone by his voodoo obsession, thus joining his partner, Hijack Woman and his boy wonder sidekick, Theft Boy, in the slammer. The defiant Veil Row Woman might also take some pacifying before we see the back of her.
Unfortunately the most dangerous pyromaniac supervillain remains at large after all these years. When will they finally catch the Hell Fire Priest? As usual, it seems, the media is making our world seem even more terrifying than we ever had reason to imagine. And when the superheroes it provides are this lame, a bit of fear might be justified.
An interesting element of certain languages, among them German, Turkish and our own English, is the allowance for compound nouns. We’re all aware that in English you can string some nouns together without modifying them to give more information about the nature, location or purpose of a the final noun. You know, spider monkey, fridge magnet, Ryanair customer complaints department. It makes for a more compact construction than, for example, the Romance languages like French or Spanish, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) translates back as the Organisation of the Treaty of the North Atlantic (um, OTAN). However, this construction is open to abuse, and the constraints of news headlines, where the optimal use of each word must be exploited, can twist good, respectable, hardworking words into some truly preposterous sentences. Take this example, from the BBC: ‘Dog fouling CCTV camera crackdown’ - five nouns shunted into a chaotic pile-up from which not even the most perpendicular minds in the English language could salvage anything; too nasty a crash for JG Ballard, too much junk for William Burroughs. Really, what on earth does it mean?
But the most conspicuous example of this abuse of the opportunities afforded by compound nouns , at least for me down the years (yes, seriously), has been the inadvertent fabrication by newspapers of a legion of inept supervillains, who, just like in the comics, either come to a sticky end or are arrested. The most recent example I noticed was when I was reading The Daily Expess(again, yes, seriously) and discovered that some fiend known as Crossbow Man had been taken off the streets. From the headline one could logically assume that this was his nom de guerre; it can’t be that much of a pain for headline writers to insert the word ‘with’ between ‘man’ and ‘crossbow’ to make it clear that the crossbow was the weapon of choice of a bog standard assailant rather than the Aristotelian essence of a veteran comic book nemesis. The same can be said of Sword Man, who should be easy to distinguish from a ‘swordsman’ or ‘man with sword’ by all but the laziest of headline writers, and so, must too be a bit special with a blade in his hands, and Hammer Man, who sounds like he should be lurking in wait for you behind floating platforms and lava pits at the end of his own Megaman level.
Some of these guys are too hot for Marvel or DC Comics to touch. Pure racist evil can be found in the ethnic hatred of ne’er do wells such as Swastika Attack Woman, Nazi Salute Man and the no-nonsense brigands styling themselves as the White Hate Death Threat Men. But fortunately other supervillains are unwilling to invoke genocide and tear the patchwork of mankind apart, and so occupy the other extreme, reaching outlandish levels of speciality and banality in their evil schemes. 50 Cent Onstage Necklace Theft Man, for example, must have had a pretty lame back-story, while the Soda Pop Theft Teen was never going to recruit loyal henchmen or acquire a hideout of her own with such a piddling little foray into the world of crime. Luckily for mankind, these two went down for their crimes with few problems. In fact, they both sound so lame that the regular police were probably able to handle them without summoning Batman, who is not to be confused with ‘man with bat’, or the risible Baseball Bat Man, so puny a criminal that the courts forced him back on the streets, no doubt to do some proper damage to our society.
More versatile baddies pose a greater threat and might require more than the police to halt their evil deeds. We are fortunate that Arson Man, not to be confused with Fire Man or a fireman, was undone by his voodoo obsession, thus joining his partner, Hijack Woman and his boy wonder sidekick, Theft Boy, in the slammer. The defiant Veil Row Woman might also take some pacifying before we see the back of her.
Unfortunately the most dangerous pyromaniac supervillain remains at large after all these years. When will they finally catch the Hell Fire Priest? As usual, it seems, the media is making our world seem even more terrifying than we ever had reason to imagine. And when the superheroes it provides are this lame, a bit of fear might be justified.
Comments:
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Leech:
oddly enough the dog fouling article was used several times at TP. I demand royalties etc.
And good job on the MegaMan bit, although MegaMan V and VI's bosses would have better suit your point. And I would know etc.
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oddly enough the dog fouling article was used several times at TP. I demand royalties etc.
And good job on the MegaMan bit, although MegaMan V and VI's bosses would have better suit your point. And I would know etc.
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