Not related to the content of the article, but does anyone know why style guides would have this titled when are the same words in standard SVO order and seemingly less likely to mislead an...
Not related to the content of the article, but does anyone know why style guides would have this titled
Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege
when
Court documents allege Meta designed platforms to get children addicted
are the same words in standard SVO order and seemingly less likely to mislead an inattentive reader?
Likely because the first one makes for a more impactful headline. The reader is going to be more interested in the first headline about Meta designing platforms to get children addicted. The...
Likely because the first one makes for a more impactful headline. The reader is going to be more interested in the first headline about Meta designing platforms to get children addicted. The "court documents allege" part is "boring," so they use it to trail off at the end. The article wants to hook the reader, starting an article title with "court documents allege" isn't going to do that. Court documents allege many different things, it would be repetitive to have articles start like that, even though it's possibly less misleading.
Yeah that’s the most obvious explanation but, I couldn’t find a relevant style guide or source discussing the practice. And it is a regular practice: Meta, Amazon, Google played a part in...
Yeah that’s the most obvious explanation but, I couldn’t find a relevant style guide or source discussing the practice. And it is a regular practice:
AP seems inconsistent based on the first example and the counter example, which are both AP articles.
Edit to add that “Meta ignored warnings of Instagram’s harm to teens, ex-employee says” communicates the same information in the headline and would be consistent with the other headlines.
In this particular case, I think the papers would really like to say just "Meta designed platforms to get children addicted" and inclusion of "court documents allege" is present to cover their...
In this particular case, I think the papers would really like to say just "Meta designed platforms to get children addicted" and inclusion of "court documents allege" is present to cover their asses legally. I don't think there needs to strictly be a style guide explicitly saying this for various news orgs to recognize it as a good idea.
As for your examples, I think the clear difference is in the specificity and relevance of the ex-exployee to the actual story. Unlike in your other examples, the ex-employee is a participant in the story (and it's generally juicier when you get info from ex-employees than it is to get the same info from a lawsuit filing or outside experts).
Not related to the content of the article, but does anyone know why style guides would have this titled
when
are the same words in standard SVO order and seemingly less likely to mislead an inattentive reader?
Likely because the first one makes for a more impactful headline. The reader is going to be more interested in the first headline about Meta designing platforms to get children addicted. The "court documents allege" part is "boring," so they use it to trail off at the end. The article wants to hook the reader, starting an article title with "court documents allege" isn't going to do that. Court documents allege many different things, it would be repetitive to have articles start like that, even though it's possibly less misleading.
Yeah that’s the most obvious explanation but, I couldn’t find a relevant style guide or source discussing the practice. And it is a regular practice:
But not a universal one:
AP seems inconsistent based on the first example and the counter example, which are both AP articles.
Edit to add that “Meta ignored warnings of Instagram’s harm to teens, ex-employee says” communicates the same information in the headline and would be consistent with the other headlines.
In this particular case, I think the papers would really like to say just "Meta designed platforms to get children addicted" and inclusion of "court documents allege" is present to cover their asses legally. I don't think there needs to strictly be a style guide explicitly saying this for various news orgs to recognize it as a good idea.
As for your examples, I think the clear difference is in the specificity and relevance of the ex-exployee to the actual story. Unlike in your other examples, the ex-employee is a participant in the story (and it's generally juicier when you get info from ex-employees than it is to get the same info from a lawsuit filing or outside experts).