Confusing headlines

[Risla]

There doesn't seem to be one of these threads here yet, so let me kick it off with one I managed to seriously misparse yesterday:

Kobe Steel shares sink as it admits data falsification


I wonder what other water fixtures they share?

[hwhatting]

Well, that's the sharing economy, Japan style.

[alice]

In-flight bacon roll row passenger fined

[Pabappa]

No pun in this one, just bad writing:

Six people in St. Petersburg receive medical treatment after smell of carbon monoxide

What's wrong:

More: show

carbon monoxide is a colorless odorless gas that is slightly less dense than air. It is toxic to hemoglobic animals...

and this article from 2004 surfaced on reddit recently:

WOMEN WORK LONGER HOURS THAN MEN

whats wrong:

More: show

in fact, men work ~45 hours and women work ~34 hours. but the article starts with "women are working longer hours (than before)" and the publisher never corrected the error in the headlien.

[alice]

I can't find it on the website, but The Grauniad on Saturday had a headline which was something like "... advice for women on heat".

[Salmoneus]

I recently got given a book called "Sign Language": it's amusing signs sent in by readers of the Telegraph. They span a range, actually. Lots of giggles about "fart" being a word in other languages; some of the standard Chinese menu stuff. Some witty advertising, some culture clashes (things that sound weird in English but are probably idiomatic or humorous in other languages), and one sign seen on a house in Ireland that warmed my nostalgic heart for recapitulating so, so many confused exchanges my family had with people in my childhood: "This is the BACK door. The FRONT door is round the back*."

But a substantial number of them are parsing ambiguities relevant to this thread. Examples...

Buddy's Store
Eat Here, Get Gas
(from Colorado)

Parking
For Fish Only
(from Colorado)

County of Fairfax
Citizen Disposal Facility
(from Virginia)

NO
Under-
Standing
Any
Time
(Melbourne)

Cats Eyes Removed
(unknown)

Illegally Parked Cars Will Be Fine
(Cape Town)

Sandwichs
Kebab
Pain
(Lyon)

NOTICE TO STAFF
Will ladies please
rinse out teapots
then stand upside down in sink.
ON NO ACCOUNT
Must hot bottoms be placed on the worktops
(Scotland)

Fresh Soft Stools on Display
(Ottawa)

The male sex toilet
(Chengdu; this is obviously a translation problem, but it does create an ambiguous sign in English, so...)

Displays continue
Toilets
(on a direction arrow, Machynlleth)

Chickens
Keep Dogs On Lead
(Somerset)

reminds me of one I've seen myself in Cumbria: "Lambs Drive Carefully"

Ladies Changing
Viewing Areas
(Chester-le-Street)

Private Parts
No Entry
Access to Staff Only
(Chessington)













*in our case, the Front Door (at the back) was only to be used for Important Guests, for whom, unfortunately, it was rather hard to find; when Important Guests were not expected, it was not actually a door, because it was blocked off with things on the inside. The back door, at the front, was the door that everyone else thought was our front door, but a rudimentary knowledge of architectural etiquette would have informed them could not possibly be the Front Door. This also meant that any strangers calling invariably and offensively knocked or rang at the back door, rather than the front door where they should have gone (though my parents eventually gave up and accepted that the postman, at least, could use the back door)... we actually had a second, Old Front Door that was never actually used as a door, perhaps because nobody had ever been Important enough...

[Salmoneus]

National Geographic: A widely celebrated test believed to be able to determine if tropical marine aquarium fish were caught illegally using cyanide may be based on problematic data, a new study says.

(underline to point out the problem)

[mèþru]

Assassinfish

[hwhatting]

Three readings that I can see:
1) The fish use cyanide (the funniest, but also the least likely)
2) The test uses cyanide
3) Cyanide was used to catch the fish
I assume 3) is the intended reading?

[Pabappa]

Ha! That's a good one. I should've seen that right away but for some reason I didn't. Yes, it's #3.

[Linguoboy]

It only just occurred to me that Crazy Rich Asians could be Asians that are both crazy and rich or Asians who are so rich it's crazy.

[Linguoboy]

Man in country illegally charged with murder of Mollie Tibbetts

[Frislander]

It only just occurred to me that Crazy Rich Asians could be Asians that are both crazy and rich or Asians who are so rich it's crazy.

Also the author of the book is apparently wanted in Singapore for dodging national service (which is ironic when you consider that this is the kind of thing the super rich would do, and the book was based off of his own experiences growing up...)

[Linguoboy]

This is truly unfortunate: a petition site that lets you share links with the prefix "[your name] need your help". Which would be alright if it didn't give its petitions names like "He raped a 14-year old and will serve no jail time".

[Salmoneus]

That is indeed unfortunate. As in "will get people murdered" unfortunate...


Two things amused me recently. I've just seen a line on Variety about a company in bankruptcy looking to sell off its films: It has signaled that it is open to entertaining offers for “City of Lies,” a crime thriller with Johnny Depp

And it's been on the BBC for a while and it keeps catching me: Top tips for making your family swim awesome.

[mèþru]

And it's been on the BBC for a while and it keeps catching me: Top tips for making your family swim awesome.

I don't get it.

[Salmoneus]

And it's been on the BBC for a while and it keeps catching me: Top tips for making your family swim awesome.

I don't get it.

Maybe it's just a British thing. Here, one of the great shibboleths of class in language is traditionally distinguishing adverbs from adjectives: using adjectives adverbially something we're taught from a young age to avoid. So my instinctive reaction is "ugh, even the BBC don't speak good now!"... until I realise that no, that's not 'bad grammar', that's just totally different parsing.

[Linguoboy]

I can't come across discussions like this without thinking of this pair of clips from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

[Travis B.]

And it's been on the BBC for a while and it keeps catching me: Top tips for making your family swim awesome.

I don't get it.

Maybe it's just a British thing. Here, one of the great shibboleths of class in language is traditionally distinguishing adverbs from adjectives: using adjectives adverbially something we're taught from a young age to avoid. So my instinctive reaction is "ugh, even the BBC don't speak good now!"... until I realise that no, that's not 'bad grammar', that's just totally different parsing.

What I interpret as the most likely parsing of the sentence still sounds completely wrong to me, and I am not even British. Awesome is not an adverb!

Edit: Okay, now I parsed what was meant; I didn't see that "family swim" was intended to be a compound noun.

[Salmoneus]

I don't get it.

Maybe it's just a British thing. Here, one of the great shibboleths of class in language is traditionally distinguishing adverbs from adjectives: using adjectives adverbially something we're taught from a young age to avoid. So my instinctive reaction is "ugh, even the BBC don't speak good now!"... until I realise that no, that's not 'bad grammar', that's just totally different parsing.

What I interpret as the most likely parsing of the sentence still sounds completely wrong to me, and I am not even British. Awesome is not an adverb!

Edit: Okay, now I parsed what was meant; I didn't see that "family swim" was intended to be a compound noun.

Exactly.