BECAUSE I am on R&R I will remind peopleof a headline which appeared in the Examiner last month saying: ‘New pubic rents points system rolled out.’
This caused something of a reader riot. The word public has for years been a high risk typo area.
What now follows is another rummage through my Funnies File to dig out some of the other newspaper headlines I have collected, in the Isle of Man as well as far and wide. Some are inadvertently funny, others are a clever demonstration of the sub-editors’ black art.
The Examiner classic in the latter context, which I have published before, related to a letter written to Port Erin Commissioners complaining about a long walk to the village public toilets. It was:
‘To loos a trek.’
Otherwise I have two headlines which appeared in the Isle of Man Courier. One was ‘Man in court for pedalling drugs’ and the other was ‘Erection of a swelling in Majestic Drive, Onchan.’
Outside Manx newspapers the death of Margaret Thatcher reminded me of the following in the London Evening Standard when she was forced to resign as Prime Minister: ‘Oh Happy Day, When Margaret Walked, Oh Happy Day.’
The Sun has always been good for its headlines.
When North Korea was causing trouble some time ago its front page was graced by: ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?’
When I was working in Southport in the 1950s my paper ran the headline: ‘Southport a town of old people. Grave problem.’
We also headed a story about a dispute over appointing a female vicar with “’Do you want a woman vicar?’
I remember a headline on a story from the Blackpool Music Festival: ‘Organ trophy is lost by inches. Girl’s stool high.’
It does make sense. The girl was only 5ft 3ins tall and she failed to win the organ class because she didn’t realise the stool she had to sit on was adjustable for height and her feet couldn’t reach the pedals properly.
There are also celebrated single column headlines. When the American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst made a speech he quoted Edward Bulwer Lytton in saying: ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’
The sub-editor on one of his papers which reported his speech laid the headline out like this:
‘Pen is
‘Mightier
‘Than sword.’
Finally, many brilliantly conceived headlines never appear in print, for reasons of delicacy. One such was written for a report in an American newspaper on the death of Elvis Presley: ‘Return to Sender.’
