'Cops' Murder Sparks Fear' yells the headline, and while mother-tongue teachers hardly look twice, even many of our best learners will be puzzled. Newspaper headlines are a relatively small but important part of language. And they deserve a bit more attention in the classroom. That stimulating class activity that ends up with students being invited to write a newspaper article will be all the more fruitful when the students have more of an idea of how to create a successful headline for their article. A little bit of work on the style, vocabulary and mechanics of headlines can easily provide a deeper understanding of the art of headline writing, aiding comprehension and spurring on some useful language work.

Sometimes learners need to be "thrown in at the deep end". Rather than spending precious minutes or even hours listening to long, dreary explanations that hardly seem to sink in, students can learn so much more by being asked to work things out for themselves. Of course a little guidance is often required, but the results of such a hands-on approach will be much more meaningful.

One of the first features that anyone instinctively identifies in newspaper headlines is their "telegraphic nature". Space is a prime constraint on headlines, so brevity is essential. This "art of compression", as it has been described, cries out for students to discover what headline writers miss out, as well as what verb system they use, what kind of vocabulary and syntax they employ when they come up with a catchy headline. Here are some practical ideas for classroom activities that stimulate an analysis of headline style.

Choose a few newspaper headlines from a paper you have at hand, a fairly random selection of perhaps 10-12, cut out and photocopied onto sheets or onto an OHP slide. Alternatively, if time allows, let students working in small groups make up their own collection from the papers. Then ask the students – preferably working in pairs or small groups – to rewrite the headlines as full, standard sentences, adding anything that is missing and making any other changes necessary. The following are some examples of the kind of headlines that could be used:

Trying to rewrite some headlines such as these as full sentences is an ideal task for group work, with lots of exchange of ideas. Some monitoring will of course help. Any vocabulary problems should be cleared up very quickly at this stage with brief explanations or referral to the dictionary. Once this rewriting task is more or less complete, ideas can be pooled. The first question has to be: "What is missing?". And it will quickly emerge (perhaps with a little guidance) that certain language elements are often omitted. Working together, a list can be compiled on the blackboard, whiteboard or OHP. The list should look more or less like this:

• articles ('the', 'a', etc.): very rarely are articles used in headlines; examples where the article needs to be added to the headlines above include the worst storm, a minister, a Turkish city, a ship, the oldest cat, and so on.
• auxiliaries: auxiliary verbs are needed when rewriting headlines such as an EU boss has been hit by a scandal, a secret diary is (going) to be published or £1m-worth of heroin has been found on a ship. Closely related to the lack of auxiliaries is the tense system in headlines (see below). Since the tense picture is actually fairly complex, it is worth leaving it till later rather than digressing at this stage.
• the verb 'to be': the auxiliaries omitted are, of course, mainly forms of the verb 'to be', but at times the copula can also be omitted, as in a Turkish city is in ruins or the ban on tobacco ads is long overdue, and at times an initial "there" or "this" can also be added; There has been a big boost for the Labour party in the polls.
• prepositions and pronouns: these omissions will probably not emerge very clearly from a collection of short headlines. Prepositions are only omitted very occasionally when the meaning is nevertheless clear. The lack of pronouns will be seen much more clearly if subheads (secondary headlines, particularly favoured in the popular press) are taken into consideration. In subheads, people and things may be mentioned for a second time, and this is where pronouns are omitted more frequently. However, pronoun-less headlines such as Killed by Pet Hamster are found when the victim is not anyone of note and the action itself is of greater interest.
• miscellaneous omissions: a variety of other words may be omitted, again when the meaning is nevertheless self-evident. An example from the above selection is £1m-worth of heroin. In a headline such as Escaped tiger in horror attack, a linking verb phrase such as "has been involved" would complete the idea.
• punctuation: this is a feature the students may well have missed, but it's worth pointing out that headlines use very little punctuation. They hardly ever use full stops, semicolons and so on. Commas may sporadically be used, sometimes in place of "and". Occasional inverted commas, exclamation marks, question marks, colons and dashes may be found. Examples are IRA: Killer Bomb Ours or Elvis Murdered? or again Free At Last!. Students sometimes ask about the use of capital letters for words in headlines. The picture is rather complicated: the selection of headlines above highlights the diversity. American newspapers often give a capital letter to every word in a headline; most British papers capitalise all words except articles, prepositions, auxiliaries and so on. Nowadays, however, many papers in Britain in particular only give a capital letter to the first word.

Perhaps before going on any further, it might be worthwhile asking students for comments as to why headlines omit certain words. Reasons that will probably emerge include the concept of a "telegraphic style" which also suggests a rather urgent way of delivering the news, and a basic quest for big, striking presentation – the fewer the words, the larger the remaining words can be printed.

Following straight on from the analysis of what newspaper headlines omit – the lack of auxiliaries has already pointed the way – the other main area of change of note is tenses. When rewriting the headlines as full, standard sentences, the tenses may have caused some problems and some gentle help may have been needed to get suitable forms (the present perfect often rears its ugly head once again here). A headline such as Secret Diary To Be Published should be expanded into: is to be published, is going to be published or something similar that suggests a future time scale. The headline Oldest cat dies will probably be expanded into The (nation's) oldest cat has died. A table can be built up, along the following lines, to show the tense system and the time periods implied.

The headlines selected above will probably already have pointed towards another typical feature: the strong vocabulary used in headlines. Words such as boost, quit, leak, quake, hit, ban, and so on are typical of newspaper headlines. Students may know some of these words, others may be new. Whatever, it is worthwhile giving students a list of some common headline terms and ask them to find synonyms, words that they might be more familiar with. It is also a good opportunity for some dictionary work. The following list, with some sample synonyms, gives an idea of what such an activity might entail:

After working on such a list, some conclusions can easily be drawn. Even the sleepiest of students will notice that, in nearly all cases, the synonym is much longer than the original headline word. And, as has already been mentioned, shorter words mean bigger, bolder headlines. Colloquial shortenings, such as "ad" for "advertisement" or "op" for "operation", are also pressed into service for reasons of brevity. But apart from being just big and concise, headlines also need to be striking and forceful. This explains why the attention-grabbing word "blaze" is used instead of "fire", despite its extra letter. In fact most of these very effective headline words combine brevity and forcefulness. Extra language practise for this feature can be given with matching or rewriting exercises, such as the activities shown on the photocopiable page.

One of the sample headlines given at the beginning of this article was also chosen for its ambiguity. The headline 20-year friendship ends at altar can, of course, be interpreted in two very different ways – the friendship ended in a rift at an altar, or the friendship eventually led to marriage. Ambiguity is ingrained in headlines because of their short, uncluttered nature, making them easy to misinterpret. At best, when a headline is ambiguous, we may be intrigued and encouraged to read the article to find out more; at worst, the result is comical. A bit of fun can be had by working out the unintended double meanings embodied in some famous (and not so famous) ambiguous headlines (see websites listed at the end of article for fuller lists):

There is even much more to headlines than what we have identified so far. Headline writers, like journalists in general, seem to have a penchant for wordplay. This feature is particularly evident in British papers, notably in the tabloids. Puns are especially hard for foreigners to appreciate, but some easier puns are perhaps accessible: Clown Prince, Doctor Will Maintain Swiss Role or New Plant Joins Kew. A headline such as Off-the-cuff rescue – by the long arm of the law clearly makes use of wordplay, but the true significance of the puns is only revealed when reading the whole of the article (a policeman saved a drowning woman by handcuffing her to him until more help arrived, but in the process he suffered a dislocated wrist). Puns can be based on a wide range of sources, from stock expressions to the latest film or TV-programme title.

As well as wordplay, headline writers in their quest for crisp, striking phrases use nouns as verbs, adjectives as nouns, verbs as adjectives and so on. This feature, known as "class-shifting", lends even greater flexibility to the headline style. The results, however, are often confusing, even for mother-tongue speakers. But as with the ambiguous headlines examined earlier, this feature may encourage readers to look more closely at the article itself. "Class-shifting" becomes especially confusing, though, when lists of nouns or verbs are used as adjectives, as in: Cliff Plunge Horror or German floods death toll rises or again Strike Ban Shock Probe.

A final feature to be mentioned is sound. Headlines can be made to sound more appealing by using what the poet would call alliteration or assonance. For a headline writer, it's not a matter of creating a poetical atmosphere through the use of sound, it's simply a matter of coming up with a phrase that sounds good and might make readers curious enough to read the article, as in the dramatic Baby Maimed by Devil Dog, the titillating Ex-monk murders frisky fiancée 83, the much-cited Up Yours Delors or the hoax headline Bus Found Buried at South Pole.

Once the presentation phase for headline style has been completed, practice and consolidation are fairly simple matters. Opportunities and options are vast, and the following is just a short list of possible activities:

• newspaper search: working in pairs or groups, students can be asked to search through newspapers (even online) to find headlines that provide good examples of any or all the features identified. Alternatively students can be given a page or two of a newspaper from which they prepare to comment on the stylistic features of the headlines found. Yet another activity, that lends itself particularly well to a small homework task, is to get students to find a newspaper headline or two that they think is particularly successful and explain why (in the next lesson).
• comparing headlines: by looking at the same story in different newspapers for the same day (particularly feasible online), headlines can be compared. Students can be asked to say which headline they think more successful and why. Some interesting contrasts will probably emerge by comparing tabloid headlines and quality headlines. When a hurricane-force storm hit Britain in 1987, the Mirror's headline was: Fury at the Weathermen as 17 Die, the Daily Express's front page proclaimed it The Wind of Death, while the Daily Telegraph's headline was a slightly more sedate 16 killed in hurricane devastation.
• making up headlines for stories: photocopy or project via the OHP a few very short newspaper stories (simple articles ten-lines long or less will be ideal) and ask students to think up some good headlines for them. Some group brainstorming should be encouraged here. Once the students' headlines have been produced, their efforts can be compared with the original headlines for the articles.
• writing headlines for nursery rhymes, limericks, fairy stories, etc: getting away from newspaper articles themselves, students can be presented with some nursery rhymes or limericks and asked to come up with a striking headline. Well-known fairy stories can also provide the inspiration – the students themselves can be asked to give a brief initial synopsis before getting down to actually writing an appealing headline.

Newspapers have always been a particularly useful source of material in the classroom, but all too often articles are used purely for their content, stylistic features being ignored. In the case of headlines in particular, this can often leave students baffled or even encourage them to shun newspaper articles. When headlines cause problems, reading newspapers is hardly likely to be an appealing option. It may not only be just the Cops' Murder that Sparks Fear, but the headline itself! A few practical activities can help to overcome such a situation, and at the same time they can give useful language input … as well as a bit of fun.

Crystal, David (1998) Language at Play, Penguin, London.
Man, John (1995) Hitting the Headlines, Reader's Digest Association, London.
McArthur, Tom (ed.) (1992) The Oxford Companion to the English Language (entry under Headline), Oxford University Press, Oxford (also online at http://www.xrefer.com/entry/442334)
Reah, Danuta (1998) The Language of Newspapers, Routledge, London.
Robinson, Pauline (1983) Using English, Blackwell, Oxford.
Waterhouse, Keith (1989) On Newspaper Style, Viking-Penguin, London.
Win Free Sex! Gotcha!, in Newsweek, October 31 1988.

http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/headline.html
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/linguistics/synhead.html
http://www.ccl.umist.ac.uk/teaching/material/headlines-ans.html

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Match the striking words in the following headlines to their more common counterparts given below.

people's - revelation - falsified - investigation - number - resigns - attempt - removed - argument - fire - children's - prohibition - fights - election - cancelled - stop/prevent - reduction - requests - attack/incursion of robbers or police

Rewrite the following headlines as full sentences in standard English, removing the striking dramatic vocabulary and using the appropriate tenses.

   Published in Modern English Teacher (Vol. 12/3 July 2003) Modern English Publishing Ltd, UK.