This Reuters story about monkeypox, published on 30 May 2022, has an unfortunate ambiguity in its headline:
The same headline appeared on sites syndicating the report, like Yahoo! News and Nasdaq, and with trivial differences at the US’s ABC News, India’s Business Standard, Singapore’s Straits Times, and others.
The problem is the main clause:
6 Comments | 
editing, grammar, journalism, language, news, syntax | Tagged: ambiguity, crash blossoms, editing, garden path sentences, grammar, headlines, headlinese, journalism, language, monkeypox, news, Reuters, semantics, syntax, that | 
Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
A news story at Reuters last week had a striking bit of syntax in its headline:
This unorthodox grammatical construction is not unusual in headlines, but I didn’t make a note of it before. A quick search online with various headline-friendly verbs shows it to be a regular enough occurrence:
14 Comments | grammar, journalism, language, news, syntax | Tagged: ellipsis, Ernest Gowers, grammar, headlines, headlinese, journalese, journalism, language, news, pronouns, reading, Reuters, syntax, writing | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
 | “Fecking,… on The meanings and origins of… |
 | Stan Carey on STRAC, a military acronym — an… |
 | Russ on STRAC, a military acronym — an… |
| Russ on STRAC, a military acronym — an… |
Sentence first 