Thursday, June 19, 2008

More Fun With (the Lack of) Helping Verbs

Lesbians like straight men
No structural problem here, just a humorous linguistic coincidence that makes me think the headline writer was a robot, not a human.

4 comments:

  1. Or the headline writer was trying to be clever. Either way, there's no excuse. I don't think I would've realized that there was a missing helping verb there if it hadn't been pointed out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have a feeling it's actually intentional. The Register is often a little cheeky. Their headline for the suit against the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union was "Lesbians turn on lesbians in battle of Lesbos".

    ReplyDelete
  3. good point, Andy. I know one of the editors here in San Francisco, and they're definitely a witty bunch. You can also tell that it's a UK publication from the brand of humor.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, I think the Register people knew exactly what they were doing with this one - a perfect example of a headline which manages to be funny while working well from a search engine point of view.

    ReplyDelete