August 26, 2006

and the pulitzer for headlines goes to...

Missing Chechen Was Secret Bride of Terror Leader.

Wasting only two of its eight words on grammatical business, it stacks up not one, nor two, but three perfectly compelling noun-adjective pairs, perhaps the most insinuating hed ever for a story about which the readers are likely to have no prior knowledge.

Indeed, given that it could have run "Missing Chechen: Terror Leader's Secret Bride," the placement of the minimal verb and preposition seems designed exactly to point up the independent formulae, each in its crystalline irreducibility — an Int-News version of "Snakes on a Plane."

Posted by jane at August 26, 2006 12:44 PM | TrackBack