Reuters Shows Us the Importance of Clear Headline Punctuation

(Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Headline writing can be a tricky thing. You want to be evocative but not clickbaity. You need to convey as much information as possible but are majorly limited by space so every character counts.

Sometimes, though, it’s worth sacrificing a few characters so as not to confuse your message. And it’s pretty remarkable just how much confusion can be caused by, say, a single colon, as Reuters showed us this weekend:

(Reuters)

Yes, thanks to the choice to use a colon instead of an attributive verb (like “says Cuomo”), the message here is that New York’s governor is, himself, the state’s first COVID-19 patient, which, of course, he is not.

Reuters has been making and not learning from their mistake for a while now.

The choice to replace an attributive verb with a colon in headlines isn’t uncommon. It is, however, a precarious decision. Best case scenario: you save a few characters. Worst case: see above.

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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