• Steve@communick.news
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    41
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Why can’t some headline writers use comas?

    Father of, 18 year old fatally shot by Ohio police, charged with hitting and killing deputy, with car

    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      12 hours ago

      Whoever taught you how to use commas needs their teaching license revoked because that is probably the worst attempted use of commas I’ve ever seen.

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 hours ago

        There is a whole part of journalism dedicated to writing headlines, and I can tell you it’s some of the most fucked up literally rules I have seen in my life.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      21 hours ago

      That is not at all how you use commas. You’ve broken your clauses.

      Father of 18 year old, fatally shot by Ohio police, charged with hitting and killing deputy with car.

      That would be correct. Good ACT question lol.

      • Steve@communick.news
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        18 hours ago

        While your certainly sounds better with the word choice in the headline, it doesn’t reflect the actual facts of events.

        “Father of an 18 year old,” establishes the father as the subject, and the 18 year old as a specifying factor. So the the rest of the sentence states, it was the father who was “fatally shot by Ohio police” and “charged with hitting and killing deputy”. It’s still unclear if it was the father or the deputy who was “with car”.

        Where as my commas separate the facts accurately. Their strangeness comes from the extremely poor word choice and order of facts in the headline.

        “Father of,” establishes the father as the subject. “18 year old fatally shot by Ohio police,” is together a single specifier. “charged with hitting and killing deputy,” states what happened to the father. And finally “, with car” is what the father used, to hit and kill the deputy.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          18 hours ago

          “Father of,” establishes the father as the subject. “18 year old fatally shot by Ohio police,”

          No. The subject is the father yes, but you can’t cut off the “of” that way.

          • Steve@communick.news
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            14 hours ago

            But using those words you’d have to, to establish that it isn’t actually the father who was shot, but the 18 year old.

            The terrible use commas comes from the terrible word choice. Rewriting the entire sentence would be the best option.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Damn, I know everyone else said it too but honestly wtf is this travesty you’ve written. It’s an affront to the comma and maybe to punctuation everywhere. Hell, your “correction” might be an ungodly abomination born of the netherworld sent to break our poor brains.