Headlines

Not to be confused with click bait. Because I am using the word "headline" and not "click bait." Therefore this article is not about click bait.

“One headline”

~ Not dancers

A headline is a sequence of words put in large big letters above a news story to mislead the readers about the subject of the story. You have to go to Journalism school to learn how to write them. A big part of writing them is figuring out near synonyms that have fewer letters.

Headlines are most common in Anglophone countries, although they may be come to be practiced by cargo cults if they become sophistocated enough. It would have been derived from a yellow form (it could be post-hepatic jaundice) of disseminating current events, except in the earlier form, the goal was to shock (if this author remembers history that happened 100 years before he was born correctly) but now is predominantly to befuddle or perhaps bamboozle. Perhaps this whole article is itself a headline, and you have experienced the phaseolus, because there are many things to obstruct your understanding.

Examples of headlines

• A mass of unusual sorts takes place in a church in Pennsylvania, where dozens of revelers come to pray armed with semi-automatic weapons.: The church isn't Anglican or Catholic (or even catholic, for that matter)
• Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms: The violinist was not linked to blossoms of any kind.
• Chvrches discuss Scottish independence: In which the people in Chvrches talk about not talking about the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

See also...

• Betteridge's law of headlines: does this article exist yet?