Punctuation matters
The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday morning proved the importance of punctuation in a headline for a story about a speech by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Another comma is probably needed here…
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Tru dat
A simple solution would be a dash after “unhelpful”.
Another comma may fixed the problem of the headline mistakenly and incompetently calling the quoted Muslims “unhelpful”.
But it wouldn’t make it any more useful as a headline. Effective headlines are supposed to be easy to read and understand quickly.
There’s an unfortunate and counterproductive trend towards comma-mediated complexity in headlines in that paper.
Why not just write a more straightforward headline and drop the “helpful” because its kinda implied in the “reckless”?
Muslims say Abbott’s speech was reckless
And in Thursday’s SMH, page two of Businessday, a headline starts ”Lightening strikes twice …” Thought it was a clever pun but fraid not. We get the first edition here so I hope it was corrected down the line.
love it
Take the “un” off unhelpful:)
SMH, equally unhelpful…