Headlines Expected to Inform, or: James Howard Complains About the Smallest Things

Consider this an interlude between Part I and Part II of our ongoing series; we'll return to James Howard Closes Out November after these brief messages.

Winnipeg Free Press, you know I love you, but -- I'm not repeating myself, am I? Okay, good -- Winnipeg Free Press, you know I love you, but it would be nice if you would stick to certain English language conventions when you're writing the headlines for your stories.

I don't mean to pick on you guys! You're still the best daily (or mostly-daily) paper we have in the city, and you can take that as you will. (And it's not like there's really much point in doing a string of posts about the Sun, unless I would repost Brodbeck's column or the Sunshine Girl every day and add a perfunctory "YEAHHHH WHAT-EV-ERRRRR" after them.) But you folks at the Free Press, like folks at most newspapers, usually only tend to use certain turns of phrase in a certain way, so if all of a sudden you use them differently it really causes a lot of mental dischord for us gentle readers.

Here are seven unaltered headlines from the Winnipeg Free Press, in chronological order; six of them are used to describe something in the future, and one is used to describe something in the past. Read each one in turn, and see if your brain picks out the interloper on your first readthrough.









See what I mean? See what I mean?

That sequence again, in helpful animated .GIF format:



I'm not trying to cause a stink, and I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy the word "walloping", but I really would appreciate it in the future if you guys didn't just nonchalantly screw with our understanding of time. You couldn't have written "feared for life"? Or "had life threatened"? The way that headline was written, it had me expecting and anticipating an upcoming scheduled event in which an ex-gangster would be put to death via a ferocious, ferocious walloping -- and honestly I'm actually a little disappointed now, since that isn't the case. Here you guys had my hopes up and everything, like maybe this was the next step of Project DIVIDE -- but, no. Dang.

In conclusion: "expected to" is very important to our future, and I am very disappointed in you.

Now, with that exciting interlude out of the way, we can move on to Part II of our continuing series; it can be expected to (see how that works) show up in the next couple of days. And by that point we'll already be a week deep into December, but hey, I've got to strike while the iron's still... lukewarm!