Confusing headlines

[Linguoboy]

From a presentation on our reopening plan: All buildings closed only to essential and critical staff.

This may be one of those antonymical thinkos we've talked about elsewhere.

[bradrn]

Trump blasts ..................... Mount Rushmore

It took me a second to realise that I had something covering the key words: “‘far-left fascism’ at”.

[KathTheDragon]

I think the full headline's even better.

[bradrn]

I think the full headline's even better.

Why?

[KathTheDragon]

Because the more natural reading has Trump attacking a mountain with a fictional ideology.

[bradrn]

Because the more natural reading has Trump attacking a mountain with a fictional ideology.

Oh, I completely missed that one! And I can even think of a third reading: “Trump blasts [‘far-left fascism’ at Mount Rushmore]” (as opposed to ‘far-left fascism’ everywhere else).

[Pabappa]

Nebraskans toiled at 'The Outpost' before horrifying attack portrayed in new war film

I dont really see a way to explain this one .... its not a garden path and there are no double meanings. Its just really poor wording. "The Outpost" isnt the proper name of the army base, its the name of the film.

[Linguoboy]

Lucky ducks saved by Fire Department from sinking inflatable swan on East River (AMNY)

[bradrn]

Lucky ducks saved by Fire Department from sinking inflatable swan on East River (AMNY)

Now that’s a headline you don’t see every day. (Though I can’t see anything actually confusing about it.)

EDIT: Oops, after looking up the original article, turns out I completely misinterpreted what this was about! The ‘lucky ducks’ are actually humans, not ducks — which makes a lot more sense.

[Ares Land]

oh, a funny one in French : Lidl a été obligé de s'excuser après la découverte "traumatisante" d’une cliente anglaise dans sa sauce bolognaise.

Literally: Lidl had to apologize after the traumatic discovery of an English customer in its Bolognese sauce.

[bradrn]

oh, a funny one in French : Lidl a été obligé de s'excuser après la découverte "traumatisante" d’une cliente anglaise dans sa sauce bolognaise.

Literally: Lidl had to apologize after the traumatic discovery of an English customer in its Bolognese sauce.

Ooh, excellent — you managed to make a multilingual confusing headline! (For anyone else confused, it’s an English Customer’s traumatic discovery in its Bolognese sauce, not the discovery of an [English Customer in its Bolognese sauce].)

[Raphael]

One from a German newspaper a few years ago where I don't remember the exact words, just the general gist:

For context, you should know that in a number of German cities, "U2" is short for the Underground Line No. 2. Now, a few years ago, there was apparently an incident on that line in one city where a subway musician beat up a passenger. Then, a local tabloid wrote about this with a headline more or less like

U2: Annoying Musician Beats Up Passenger

And then, someone posted a photo of that headline to Twitter with the comment

"I think Bono is going a bit too far now..."

[bradrn]

This horrifying sentence isn’t a headline, but certainly is confusing enough:

The layout of subresources of images on other logical devices that are bound to VkDeviceMemory objects associated with the same underlying memory resources as external memory objects on the lost device becomes VK_IMAGE_LAYOUT_UNDEFINED.

Apparently it comes from the Vulkan specification. The source says that ‘I got about half way through and suddenly discovered I didn't know where I was, what year it was or my name’ — seems about right!

[bradrn]

Seen on a newspaper cover page from 1994:

ARSON REWARD
$100,000 on offer

[Pabappa]

A Half-Eaten Cookie Was Found Inside A Book Dating Back To 1529

Probably not too many people will miss this one, but when I saw it i read halfway through the story before i realized that they were talking about a fifty year old cookie inside a 500 year old book, rather than a 500 year old cookie inside a book of a similar age. Its possible the writer did this on purpose to get clicks, but I wouldnt put in the same category as most of the others here since it's plain from the sentence construction that the more likely interpretation is the correct one.

https://www.delish.com/food-news/a31340 ... -old-book/

[Linguoboy]

'Spit hood' death police chief in defiant resignation (Beeb)

Even knowing the background on this story, I'm not sure what they were going for.

[Linguoboy]

Oh, here's a beaut from our local rag: Attorney General William Barr credits Operation Legend for recent dip in homicides at Chicago briefing

(To quote the friend who shared this: "I would think any homicides at a briefing was too many.")

[sasasha]

Oh, here's a beaut from our local rag: Attorney General William Barr credits Operation Legend for recent dip in homicides at Chicago briefing

(To quote the friend who shared this: "I would think any homicides at a briefing was too many.")

Lovely. Since I came at this looking for ambiguity, I first read "recent dip in homicides" as something similar to "recent dip in the lake", implying that the Attorney General was acknowledging Operation Legend's influence in his decision to dip his toe into the practice of committing murder at briefings in Chicago!

[bradrn]

Cracking the Who You Show Your Work Code

Bad punctuation, bad grammar, bad article summary… this headline gets nothing right.

[zompist]

The U of Alabama did not run this one by either the Linguistics or the Reverse Psychology Department:

https://twitter.com/NataliaAntonova/sta ... 4328387584