How to Write Headlines for News Articles

Ben and Jen

Live 8 success

Soul singer des

C8 youngsters

Spielberg movie

Probe hits comet

Olympics venue

After a close contest, the International Olympic Committee have decided that London will host the 2012 Olympic Games. The other teams bidding were Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow.

A probe the size of a washing machine, launched by NASA, has hit its target (at 23,000 miles an hour), the comet Temple One. The impact has been compared with a mosquito flying into a jumbo jet. Scientists hope the pictures of the inside of the comet will give them more information about how the solar system was formed millions of years ago.

Sci-fi thriller War of the Words, which stars Tom Cruise, took $101.7 million in its first five days in the US, and $204.2 million worldwide since its release. Te film, an adaptation of an G Wells novel, cost a reported $135 million to make. It has received positive reviews and is expected to be one of the major its of 2005.

Young people from the poorest and richest nations have gathered in Scotland to host a junior version of the G8 summit. Organised by Unicef, the event aims to discuss issues like poverty, IV/Aids and education. One of the delegates, eleven-year-old Aminata Palmer from Sierra Leone, said “I want the G8 leaders to help stop suffering among children in the world. People are suffering – especially in my country.”

Soul singer Luther Vandross has died at the age of 54, two tears after suffering a major stroke. During is career he sold 25 million albums and sang wit top stars like David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin. Vandross had suffered for years from diabetes and hypertension as well as battling fluctuations in his weight.

The Live 8 rock concerts were last night hailed a great success. Organiser Bob Geldofsaid that the concerts ad been ‘full of hope and possibility and life’. The concerts were held in ten cities around the world including, London, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Moscow, Rome and Tokyo. They were designed to put pressure on the G8 leaders meeting in Scotland on 6t July when considering Africa’s future.

Hollywood actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner have revealed they are married and expecting their first child. The couple met when they both appeared in the film Pearl Harbour but only started dating in July 2004.

Newspaper headline language

A headline is a short, clear summary of the information presented in a newspaper article. To write headlines correctly, certain rules must be followed.

a) use the present simple tense to describe events which have occurred very recently. Earthquake hits L.A., for example, means the earthquake has just happened, probably in the last twenty-for hours;

b) omit the verb “be” when using the passive voice to describe a past event. Write: President defeated or Lost boy found not: President was defeated or Lost boy was found;

c) write “to be + past participle” when using the passive voice to describe a future event, as in: Hospital to be opened by Queen (= A hospital is going to be opened by the Queen.) when using the active voice to describe a future event, write the fill infinitive (to be) only, as in Queen to open hospital (= The Queen is going to open a hospital);

d) omit articles (a, an, the) as in Child trapped in rubble (= A child was trapped in rubble);

e) put nouns one after the other as in London factory explosion injures 27 (which means that an explosion n a factory located in London resulted in twenty-seven people being injured;

f) avoid using prepositions (words like under, over, across, through).

Write: Unidentified virus spreads rather than An unidentified virus has spread across the country); and

g) use abbreviations like US, UN, NATO. Write: UFO sighted not: An unidentified flying object was seen.

& 1. Read and study the features of headline languages for further exercises and discussions.

Here are some typical examples of headlines from tabloid newspapers with comments on their use of language.[popular papers with smaller pages than more serious papers]

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