Over the decades, headline writers have developed a grammar of their own. The headlines that they write are more like “skeletonised” sentences that are written using as few words as possible.
The reason for this is not hard to understand. Headline writers have very little space to communicate. They have to bring out the essence of a news story in eight to ten words.
To do this, they have developed their own language. The key features of this are:
1. Dropping of articles
You very rarely see the articles – “a”, “an” and “the” – used in a headline. Their usage is considered understood.
By doing so, the headline writer saves space that would have been occupied by three letters as in the case of “the”. This space is used to add meaning to the headline by squeezing another word.
2. Dropping of auxiliary verbs
The auxiliary verbs “is” and “are” and their past tense forms “was” and “were” too are not used in headlines. Once again, by dropping auxiliary verbs headline writers save space.
3. Use of present tense
The bulk of headlines are written in the present tense. One of the reasons to do this is to save space. The present tense form of the verb is invariably shorter than the past tense form.
However, the more important reason to use present tense is to give immediacy to a news story. You don’t feel that you are reading reports about events that happened one day ago. The present tense lends freshness to headlines.
Opposition MPs disrupt Parliament
Cricketers hold cultural event
4. Limited use of adjectives and adverbs
Headline writers hate adjectives and adverbs. And they are right. Adjectives and adverbs rarely add meaning to a headline. They also take away valuable space.
Look at the following two headlines:
B K Chaturvedi takes over as new cabinet secretary
India, Pak to continue serious talks
The adjective new could easily have been avoided. It does not add anything new to the headline.
Similarly, the Indo-Pak talks are not for fun. Why use the adjective serious to state the obvious?
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