Confusion Caused by Crash Blossoms
- Posted by: Mark Peters
- on October 17, 2009 at 11:00 am
Linguists give a name to an old headline hazard.
If brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the trapdoor of ridiculousness—at least in the world of headlines, which have long been prone to unintentional comedy along the lines of “Woman Better after Being Thrown from High-rise” and “Scientists Are at Loss Due to Brain-eating Amoeba.”
Now there’s a name for the phenomenon of ambiguously or bizarrely worded headlines: “crash blossoms,” as suggested by a poster at the Testy Copy Editors site in response to the headline “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms.”
Whoever crafted that nugget of nonsense was trying to say that the musician’s career flourished after a plane crash, but the odd syntax and unintentional coinage of “crash blossoms” flummoxed readers. The example quickly mutated into a term, which was soon picked up by John McIntyre, the Language Loggers, and beyond.
A near-perfect example was shared by Laurence Horn (via Steve Anderson) on the American Dialect Society listserv recently: “McDonald’s fries the holy grail for potato farmers“. As Stan Carey pointed out, one punctuation mark would have made the meaning clear: “McDonald’s fries: the holy grail for potato farmers.” But if you read the headline as is and in the most direct way, you might wonder what potato farmers and McDonald’s have against the holy grail, when McDonald’s found the sacred chalice, and why its mysteries are better plumbed when fried. That’s the kind of humorous mental journey a good crash blossom can inspire.
The Columbia Journalism Review has been on the crash-blossom case a long time, most notably publishing the book Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim and Other Flubs from the Nation’s Press (compiled by Gloria Cooper in 1980). This collection has many a howler, including grisly humor (“Lawmen from Mexico Barbecue Guests,” “Lucky Man Sees Pals Die”), physical impossibilities (“Genetic Engineering Splits Scientists,” “Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder”), logical absurdities (“War Dims Hopes for Peace”), inadvertent racism (“Greeks Fine Hookers”), unknowing sleaziness (“Prostitutes Appeal to Pope,” “Pastor Aghast at First Lady Sex Position”), ew-provoking nastiness (“Child’s Stool Great for Use in Garden”), and innovative adventures in law enforcement (“Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant,” “Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case”).
The word “headline” itself has a far less colorful history, but it does have some highlights, as collected by the Oxford English Dictionary. In the early 1600s, it meant “One of the ropes that make a sail fast to the yard,” but by later in that decade “headline” was used in a way similar to its current meaning, though in reference to letter-writing. It wasn’t until the 20th century that “hitting (or making) the headlines” came into vogue, and since 1927, the crash blossom-prone style of headlines has informed the word “headlinese,” meaning “The elliptical style of language characteristic of the headlines, esp. in popular newspapers.” Here’s the first known use: “In the headlines of general newspapers you see time after time such words as ‘Probe’, ‘Quiz’, ‘Tilt’, ‘Pact’, etc. In newspaper offices such language is referred to as ‘Headlinese’. We banned it from the headlines of The [United States] Daily.” A 1966 quote highlights the brevity that often leads to crash blossoms and other problems: “In headlinese you don’t marry, you wed… You don’t advance arguments against, you score.”
Crash blossoms are a variation of “garden path sentences,” a type of sentence that leads the reader into grammatical or logical sinkholes that were not intended. In the 2001 academic paper “Misinterpretations of Garden-Path Sentences: Implications for Models of Sentence Processing and Reanalysis,” Fernanda Ferreira, Kiel Christianson, and Andrew Hollingworth wrote that their research challenged “…the fundamental assumption in psycholinguistics that comprehension is based on the creation of full, accurate, and detailed representations. It appears, instead, that people work on sentences until they reach a point where it subjectively makes sense to them and then processing may cease.” In other words, if a headline sounds good and a deadline is looming, the editor may not ponder every possible meaning; therefore, “processing may cease” because there just isn’t time for more reflection and revision. With brutal deadlines and space restrictions that make Twitter seem commodious, it’s no wonder crash blossoms blossom again and again.
It’s a bit early to say if “crash blossom” will truly catch on the way “eggcorn,” “snowclone,” and “Cupertino” have in the word-nerd world, but so far its future looks bright. Headlines breed like rabbits, and even though the Internet makes it easier to fix them, there are hordes of nitpickers and humorists ready to capture a goof before it’s changed. Plus “crash blossom” itself is a juicy, vivid term—even though, as Ben Zimmer has pointed out, a Crash Test Dummies/Gin Blossoms cover band really missed the boat on this one.
Photo illustration by Atley Kasky
DISCUSSION: 19 Comments
The best “crash blossoms” I’ve seen were in the Detroit Free Press many years ago. One was printed when the pope was to visit Hamtramck. It said, “Campaign to recruit new priests to climax during pope’s visit”. The other was, “Help a fatherless boy be a big brother.”
I have two favorites (although several have occurred in the small newspapers I read in Western PA). One brief column was headed with, “Meeting for Gypsy Moths”. The other was hysterical, but when I called the paper to point out the gaffe, the writer did not seem amused. Unfortunately, it was an obituary. The decedant must have been well-liked because she got a big article! The blaring headline read, “Portage Woman Cooked at Academy”. Need I say more?
I have the BEST ALL-TIME story in this category……Years ago, a woman from Fertile, Minnesota was turning left at an intersection in the town of Climax, Minnesota. Tragically, as she made the turn, another vehicle struck hers and she died at the scene. This tragedy was immortalized to all of Minnesota by the headline…FERTILE WOMAN DIES IN CLIMAX
I went to college in Natchitoches, Louisiana and was friends with the local newspaper editor, who collected funny headlines. Here are two I remember:The head basketball coach at Many (Louisiana) High School came into a windfall and earmarked some of the funds for athletic equipment. The headline read: Many Head Coach To Get New Balls.A black man from the town of Waterproof, Louisiana tragically drowned in a local lake, and the headline read, Waterproof Negro Drowns.
When I was a journalism student at the University of Missouri in the early 70’s I remember a headline in the Columbia Missourian, following Henry Kissinger’s marriage while still negotiating with North Viet Nam: it read “Kissinger Makes Honeymoon Peace”
I use to live in a small town in Iowa by two towns: Manly and Fertile. One day in the weddings section it announced “Manly Man marries Fertile Woman.” That is one of the funniest ones that I have seen.
I do appreciate the humor in these headlines, though I am sure many of them are deliberate! But what irks me is when the computer tries to interact with real people trying to write proper English – like when I went to check out Mark Peters and was told that “Mark Peters hasn’t filled out their profile yet.” And why should he? Let them fill out their own profiles!
An obit from a small town weekly read ’she was a Baptist and a Phlebotomist’.
After reading this article (as linked from MSN homepage), I went back to find another interesting headline…Pilots who missed city say they were on laptops
A few years back the University of Florida’s men’s basketball team made it to the final four, even before they won any championships. The assistant coaches had become popular and were being considered for some head coaching jobs. The headline read “Assistants at UF seek head jobs”.
A headline of this type gave a Civil War general his nickname: Fighting Joe Hooker. Hooker hated the addition of “Fighting” to his name all the rest of his life. Hooker had sent a telegram to the War Department about a battle in which he was in command of the Union forces. The War Department released the telegram to the newspapers, which the editor of the major Washington, DC newspaper intended to run under the headline: Fighting, Joe Hooker. The typesetter set it as: Fighting Joe Hooker. The rest of the Union newspapers used the same headline and Hooker’s nickname was born.
I’m surprised there is no mention of Jay Leno in this article. He’s been showcasing this for over 20 years. In the 1980s, he published some collections of Headlines.
Growing up in New York state in the 70’s, the toxic contamination of the Love Canal was a long running story. Finally the courts ordered the chemical company, the Hooker company, to decontaminate the area. My local newpapers headline read, “Hooker ordered to clean up Love Canal”.
I lived in a town in west Texas in the 90’s and the newspaper editor was doing a piece on the local university’s girls track team. One of the throwers was hurt and had a bulging disc in her back. Well he mistakenly wrote that she had a “bulging dick in her back.” It was even on their website, needless to say, they quickly removed it from the website. Very funny and embarrassing for the young lady.
this isn’t from a newspaper headline but it’s from an announcement at a nursing home regarding a BBQ for staff and residents. it read; “Please have residents up at 11 am and ready for BBQ. Pureed residents will be served at 12:00.”
I can not believe that no one has mentioned the best one that did not mean to make reference former president Clinton…”Bonnie blows Clinton” (Headline after Hurricane Bonnie hit North Carolina in 1998)
Heard this one on the radio: after a news item about a traffic fatality there was a commercial. The segway went like this “That brings the state highway death toll to 70 for the year, More in a minute, first this message.”
My favorite was not a headline but an advertisement on a church charity sale marquee: LADIE’S BLOUSES HALF-OFF
I have seen plenty of “crash blossoms” in my time and I believe (especially back in the day when it was first in headlines) it was used for the simple purpose of grabbing a reader’s attention. I remember seeing a headline many of times and thinking to myself ‘I have to buy this paper just to see what they are talking about.’ After reading the full article, I would realize the headline was misleading. But that my friends, is a marketing ploy! To pique one’s interest enough in a story to get a consumer to purchase the paper.