Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 7:04 pm

How do those 7,000 miles from home feel about the referendum?

Which 7000 miles?

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 6:00 pm

This one isn't actually a garden path (though there is a slight ambiguity), but makes you think it must be just because the apparent meaning is so strange:
Exploding pavement growth probed

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 8:56 am

BBC again: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford withdraws from race with tumour

hwhatting · Post by **hwhatting** » Thu Sep 18, 2014 2:58 am

linguoboy wrote:BBC again: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford withdraws from race with tumour

He would have raced a bottle of Jack Daniels...

jal · Post by **jal** » Thu Sep 18, 2014 11:45 am

Salmoneus wrote:This one isn't actually a garden path (though there is a slight ambiguity), but makes you think it must be just because the apparent meaning is so strange:
Exploding pavement growth probed

I parse that as stuff growing on pavements, and that stuff exploding.

JAL

Kereb · Post by **Kereb** » Thu Sep 18, 2014 3:18 pm

yeah it totally evokes such as agaricus bitorquis, The Mushroom That Can Bust Through Pavement

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:19 pm

3rd U.S. Aid Worker Infected With Ebola Released From Hospital

Thry · Post by **Thry** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:06 am

agaricus bitorquis

I thought that was a smashed oreo

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 11:35 am

Body-worn cameras suspended by force

I'm just glad they remembered the hyphen, because otherwise that would have been really tricky.

Torco · Post by **Torco** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 2:08 pm

linguoboy wrote:3rd U.S. Aid Worker Infected With Ebola Released From Hospital

i bet that's that's one hell of a lawsuit

Arzena · Post by **Arzena** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 3:46 pm

Hong Kong Leader Blames External Forces for Joining Protests

---- · Post by **----** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:23 pm

Apple’s Cook Criticizes Alabama Over Lack of Gay Rights

I didn't know Apple had its own cook!

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:08 pm

I burst out laughing reading the name on this packet of food:
British chicken skin on legs

Then again, I guess I should be glad it wasn't 'British skin on chicken legs'...

Kereb · Post by **Kereb** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 8:09 pm

ohh SKIN-ON. that genuinely took a minute.

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:20 pm

Not even sure how to describe this particular one. My friend shared a link to a NYT article. The headline appears in his feed as:

Maine judge orders Ebola quarantine for nurse

but on the site itself, it's:

Maine judge rejects Ebola quarantine for nurse

I'm wondering if what may have happened was that the original headline was something like "Maine judge orders Ebola quarantine for nurse lifted" and then someone pointed out that the last word was being cut off on shared links, prompting them to condense it further.

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 3:48 pm

As far as I know, this isn't a gardenpath. But that's simply a guess because I have no idea what it actually means.

Stephen Amell Says Lazarus Pit Will Not Be Used For Oliver On Arrow

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:11 pm

This is more gardenpathy. From the Wikipedia article on historian Vello Helk:

Born in Varstu, Võrumaa, Estonia in 1944 Helk was mobilized in the German army and was forced to go to Germany. From there he went to Denmark, where he in 1947 attended the University of Århus[.]

(Helk was actually born in 1923.)

Post by **zompist** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 9:44 pm

linguoboy wrote:As far as I know, this isn't a gardenpath. But that's simply a guess because I have no idea what it actually means.

Stephen Amell Says Lazarus Pit Will Not Be Used For Oliver On Arrow

Stephen [an actor] says a fictional resurrection device won't be used on his character in the show Arrow (based on the DC character The Green Arrow).

(Had to look it up, though I did know what a Lazarus Pit was.)

jmcd · Post by **jmcd** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:01 am

linguoboy wrote:This is more gardenpathy. From the Wikipedia article on historian Vello Helk:
Born in Varstu, Võrumaa, Estonia in 1944 Helk was mobilized in the German army and was forced to go to Germany. From there he went to Denmark, where he in 1947 attended the University of Århus[.]
(Helk was actually born in 1923.)

Does my edit improves things?

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 10:27 am

jmcd wrote:
linguoboy wrote:This is more gardenpathy. From the Wikipedia article on historian Vello Helk:
Born in Varstu, Võrumaa, Estonia in 1944 Helk was mobilized in the German army and was forced to go to Germany. From there he went to Denmark, where he in 1947 attended the University of Århus[.]
(Helk was actually born in 1923.)
Does my edit improves things?

It does, but a more elegant solution is simply creating two full sentences.

jal · Post by **jal** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 10:39 am

linguoboy wrote:It does, but a more elegant solution is simply creating two full sentences.

There, fixed. I don't know whether it meets WP guidelines for birth location though, didn't want to spend too much time there.

JAL

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 10:36 pm

Guy spent one year crafting one second of this crazy animation per day

This Guy Has Been Tattooing His Son's Drawings On His Own Arm Since He Was 5

hwhatting · Post by **hwhatting** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 11:05 pm

linguoboy wrote:This Guy Has Been Tattooing His Son's Drawings On His Own Arm Since He Was 5

That sentence is one of those cases that are garden-pathy only if you switch off your background knowledge of reality. But it's good material for the campaign to introduce proximate and obviate pronouns into English.

ObsequiousNewt · Post by **ObsequiousNewt** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:31 am

I heard one on NPR that went something like "<organization> is condemning the large numbers of civilians killed."

(Why, what did the civilians do to earn that organization's contempt?)

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 12:50 pm

Twitter boss admits trolling failure.

Hey now, I don't know who he was trolling, but for the BBC to outright call the guy a 'failure' seems a little harsh!

zompist bboard

Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

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