If you’d like to learn more about grammar rules in English, you’ll find plenty more articles freely available on this site, and I always recommend Parrott’s extensive book (aimed at English teachers), and of course there’s the classic Strunk and White style guide.Long before live-streaming social media reports and crawling news tickers plastered on the bottom of 24-hour cable news channel feeds, the world got its news from newspapers. ![]() The 8 rules here are the most common and consistent used for headline grammar, however. There are many additional style issues that certain newspapers use, for instance the capitalisation of every word, or joining conjunctions with commas instead of conjunctions. You may also see different vocabulary in headlines, with less common, but concise, verbs, such as bid, vow and spark. ![]() Commas may also be used to join nouns (more common in American English).Īs you can see, the grammar rules for newspaper headlines can lead to ambiguous headlines, as many words are implied and not written. Police arrest serial killer – close case on abductionsĪs with reporting speech, commas, colons, semi-colons, hyphens and so on can replace all conjunctions, or some joining verbs, to join clauses.This includes leaving out other verbs such as comment, tell, argue, announce, shout – unless the act of speaking needs emphasising, for instance to demonstrate a promise or official policy. Reported speech is usually represented by a colon, or a hyphen, with the subject introduced with ‘on…’. Bush on Iraqi invasion: “This aggression will not stand.”.Mr Jones: “They’re not taking my house!”.Family of murder victim satisfied with court decision (Family of murder victim is satisfied…).Residents unhappy about new road (Residents are unhappy…).Man releases rabid dog in park (A man released a rabid dog in a park).Prime Minister hikes Alps for charity (The Prime Minister hiked the Alps).President to visit France for further talks (President is to visit / is going to visit France for further talks later this week).Parliament to decide new policy tomorrow (Parliament is to decide / will decide a new policy tomorrow).to do), a future time is not always necessary to demonstrate the future tense in headlines (and likewise, other future tense verbs are not needed). Temperatures rising as climate changes (temperatures are rising).Four stranded in sudden flood (four people have been stranded / were stranded).Lion escapes zoo – ten killed (ten people have been killed / were killed).New policy decided by Parliament (New policy has been decided by Parliament).Similarly, changing events are represented by the present participle on its own. This makes some headlines appear to be in the past tense, when actually the headlines use past participles, or particles, not the past simple. ![]() is done), auxiliary verbs are not necessary (e.g. Parliament confirming new policies every day.However, these tenses are often shown by using participles alone (e.g. it has done / it had done), and for changing events, the present continuous may be used (e.g. If we want to demonstrate the result of an action, or that something was completed, we can use perfect tenses (e.g. Parliament confirms new stray dog policy.The present tense ( it does) is quick and current, and helps emphasise the action happening, rather than its completion.
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