Confusing headlines

[Raphael]

Birch Tree, Missouri man
drowns in 'Current River'
Saturday afternoon

Are those line breaks in the original? Poetic.

[Linguoboy]

Birch Tree, Missouri man
drowns in 'Current River'
Saturday afternoon

Are those line breaks in the original? Poetic.

I included them because I think they make it more ambiguous that it would other be.

(I'm most confused by the scare quotes around Current River. After all, that's the official name of the river, not some kind of local nickname or what-have-you.)

[hwhatting]

(I'm most confused by the scare quotes around Current River. After all, that's the official name of the river, not some kind of local nickname or what-have-you.)

I guess they put them in exactly to make sure that people understood that this is the name of the river, and not the current river as opposed to the previous or the next one... after all, you can't enter the same river twice

[Man in Space]

I wasn't quite sure where to post about this, but it seemed more germane to this one rather than the other candidates:

Some of the mutineers ended up in a state of arrest, and Congress called an investigation into the event. [source]

"State of arrest"? It makes me think of cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest rather than getting taken in by the local PD, like this phrasing either is a polite way of saying "they died" or of implying both "some got arrested" and "some died". Is this standard language in period documents or similar, or is it just a weird turn of phrase?

[Linguoboy]

Ryan Reynold's Deadpool Co-star Hit the Jackpot When 'Hitman: Agent 47' Star Rejected Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon Villain Role (FandomWire)

[KathTheDragon]

What's wrong with this one?

[Man in Space]

What's wrong with this one?

I concur. If I stare at it and concentrate, I can make it make garden-path sense by treating “Hit” as a noun and supplying a deleted “Is” between it and “the Jackpot” (although it’s like when I force mine eyes to defocus—it doesn’t remain in that state and it is uncomfortable to do so).

[zyxw59]

What strikes me about it is that the only people mentioned by name in the headline are the ones I'd say are least relevant to the headline itself. Also the apostrophe is in the wrong place in "Reynold's".

[Raphael]

What's wrong with this one?

Oh, when I thought about it for a moment, it made sense to me. But at first, it looked like something that a very early ancestor of today's LLM AIs, one that wasn't yet good at making output look plausible, might have come up with.

[bradrn]

Residents driven
‘crazy’ by
construction stuff
socks in shaking
toaster

(Without the linebreaks this is a lot more understandable…)

[Linguoboy]

Oh, when I thought about it for a moment, it made sense to me. But at first, it looked like something that a very early ancestor of today's LLM AIs, one that wasn't yet good at making output look plausible, might have come up with.

+ 1.

Also, when I first read it, I wasn't sure if "Reynold's Deadpool Co-star" and "'Hitman: Agent 47' Star" were the same person or not. It's really weird to me to refer to multiple people solely by their roles without naming them.

----

AT LAST 3 ROBBED AT GUNPOINT IN HUMBOLDT PARK SPREE EARLIER THIS WEEK, CPD SAYS (ABC7)

[bradrn]

AT LAST 3 ROBBED AT GUNPOINT IN HUMBOLDT PARK SPREE EARLIER THIS WEEK, CPD SAYS (ABC7)

I found the article and still don’t get it. Where did that random ‘at last’ come from?

[hwhatting]

I found the article and still don’t get it. Where did that random ‘at last’ come from?

A typo for "at least"?

[Linguoboy]

I found the article and still don’t get it. Where did that random ‘at last’ come from?

A typo for "at least"?

That's my guess, though it's curious to note that, if that's the case, this still hasn't been corrected despite the fact that this article is three days old.

[alynnidalar]

Their police department must be so excited. At last! Crime!!

[Civil War Bugle]

"A New App Lets You Read All About Watch World News"

I initially interpreted 'watch' to refer to viewing videos about international news, and was very confused until I looked at the article and realized that the authors were talking about news relevant to wristwatch enthusiasts.

[Raphael]

Hacking- and malware-related news continue to be the gift that keeps on giving in this regard. From Bleeping Computer:

New BunnyLoader threat emerges as a feature-rich malware-as-a-service

(Not really confusing for people who know their way around the topic in question, but that probably doesn't include most people.)

[bradrn]

Perpetual board’s ‘not going to be the master of their own destiny’

More: show

(apparently Perpetual is a company)

[Raphael]

From the chapter on eels in the book The Unexpected Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke:

Two decades later, a lone male eels finally exposed his private parts. The fortuitous young biologist to make the eel's acquaintance was another Italian, Giovanni Grassi, who apprehended the fish - his sex organs swollen with sperm - swimming off the coast of Sicily.

[Qwynegold]

OK, in this case, seeing this headline as "confusing" might seem a bit pedantic, but I still think I have a point:

From Roll Call:

Florida judge: Trump documents trial will start in May

What makes this a bit confusing is that I think someone who's familiar with the structure of the courts in the USA might assume that this refers to a Florida state or local judge, when in fact, it refers to a federal judge in Florida.

It annoys me to no end that people have stopped using demonyms. I've been meaning to post about it in the linguistic pet peeves thread for a really long time now.