Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:19 pm

mèþru wrote:
Pole, the wrote:mentally stable aren't going to buy guns anyway
Not necessarily true. A lot of people without mental problems buy guns without any reason.

I think you kind of misread the tone of Pole's post there.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:30 pm

Ars Lande wrote:English might be evolving a little too fast for us non-native speakers to catch up.

I somehow suspect that most native speakers don't understand that either...

mèþru · Post by **mèþru** » Wed Feb 08, 2017 6:03 pm

Yeah, I guess I did.

masako · Post by **masako** » Tue Feb 14, 2017 11:17 am

"Come to Mar-a-Lago, where you can watch US foreign policy being made and meet the man who carries the nuclear football for the low, low price of $200,000 a year"

from Vox

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:59 pm

Chance The Rapper Reportedly Turns Down $10M To Stay Independent

KathTheDragon · Post by **KathTheDragon** » Sat Feb 18, 2017 8:01 pm

Is it just me, or have these recent headlines been neither confusing nor garden path-y?

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Wed Feb 22, 2017 6:46 pm

How about this gem of syntactic ambiguity (thanks, Politico):

Cabinet picks clash with White House over hiring

alynnidalar · Post by **alynnidalar** » Thu Feb 23, 2017 10:55 am

That's a fun one!

jmcd · Post by **jmcd** » Sun Feb 26, 2017 12:28 pm

I understand others would have problems with the unfamiliar syntax, but despite the unfamiliarity of the syntax, the main difficulty of the statement for me is that I don't know who 'Palestine Queen' or 'Gigi' are. Apparently, they refer to one and the same person, Gigi Hadid.

Pole, the · Post by **Pole, the** » Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:44 pm

Chinese official denied visa to attend U.S. planetary science conference

KathTheDragon · Post by **KathTheDragon** » Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:51 pm

What's the problem with that one?

Ryusenshi · Post by **Ryusenshi** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 2:29 am

I read it as "the Chinese officials who were denied a visa are about to attend a conference".

jal · Post by **jal** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 3:49 am

Or, a Chinese official did the denying, so that someone else couldn't attend. Or, the Chinese offical denied a bunch of poor visa to attend a conference!

JAL

KathTheDragon · Post by **KathTheDragon** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 6:51 am

Oh, that's amusing! I read it as (presumably the intended) "A Chinese official who was going to attend the conference was denied a visa"

Pole, the · Post by **Pole, the** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:11 am

Or, a Chinese official did the denying, so that someone else couldn't attend. Or, the Chinese offical denied a bunch of poor visa to attend a conference!

Or a denied visa going to attend something, as I'd most mindlessly parse it.

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Thu Mar 23, 2017 6:31 am

The BBC continue to exaggerate the size and antiquity of scientists:
They stalked the earth around a hundred million years ago and scientists are constantly looking for new dinosaur fossils.

jmcd · Post by **jmcd** » Fri Mar 24, 2017 11:33 am

Lol.

I first read the following:
Stephen Hawking, Given Two Years to Live in 1963, Is Going To Space Over 50 Years Later

as being about time travel. It wasn't until I actually read the article that I realised it wasn't Hawking travelling back to the year 1963.

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Fri Mar 24, 2017 11:55 am

From a novel by William Trevor:

"He strolled on the promenade among couples exercising their dogs, and nuns, and priests, and Christian Brothers."

I know that he's using all those commas specifically to prevent a reading that makes the clergy objects of the gerundive, but on me it perversely has the opposite effect. But maybe it's just that I love the image of Irish people keeping Christian Brothers as pets.

hwhatting · Post by **hwhatting** » Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:52 pm

As an Irish Catholic, you have to exercise your clergy daily.

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:59 am

hwhatting wrote:As an Irish Catholic, you have to exercise your clergy daily.

Indeed, reports are always telling us how greatly the clergy are exercised by the modern Irish population...

(if you'll excuse the pun)

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Thu Mar 30, 2017 6:25 am

Caption on Politico:

President Donald Trump speaks as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie looks on during a meeting about opioid and drug abuse in the Cabinet Room at the White House on March 29

Axiem · Post by **Axiem** » Mon Apr 03, 2017 7:57 pm

This one took me a few moments:

2 new employees filling out paperwork among dead in St. Louis boiler explosion

mèþru · Post by **mèþru** » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:05 pm

That article gives whiplash: one moment I'm laughing at the title; the next I'm very sad because of the deaths.

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 4:17 pm

The first source where I saw that story bizarrely located it in "Eastern Missouri". I expected it was going to be in some podunk like Elsberry or Park Hills or Perryville, not in the middle of St Louis City.

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 12:07 pm

Even for someone like me, who follows Major League Baseball, this was somewhat puzzling. If you don't, it must be completely opaque:

Braves foam tomahawks spill onto I-75 South in Cobb

zompist bboard

Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

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