Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Absurd Miami Herald headline of the day

Via Bill at Random Pixels:

Let's see if I have this straight: A guy gets kidnapped, has a hood wrapped around his head while he's driven around for two hours and pistol-whipped. The kidnappers demand $5,000 and if they don't get it they threaten to kill his family. But it all ended happily because he was released?
Geez.
.
.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Side note: My AP Stylebook says there's one "p" in kidnaping. Has that changed over time? I guess if you don't like a rule, you should just ignore it, right?

Kevin Gregory said...

My old American Heritage dictionary allows both spellings.

Anonymous said...

You guys are really flyspecking every web headline and alternate word spelling now?

Time to take up needlepoint or something.

Anonymous said...

That's what copy editors do. If you're not in the news business, you may not realize that paying attention to details is the cornerstone of accuracy. Oh, wait. McClatchy isn't in the news business. It's in the advocacy business. Sorry. My bad.

Addendum/correction: My newest version of the AP Stylebook says "kidnapping" is correct. I was taught (back in the '70s, Patty Hearst, etc.) that one "p" was correct.