The goofs this time

I have collected a few goofs in the headlines of some recent issues of the Daily Trust titles in continuation of our occasional series on errors in headlines and in the stories. But first, let us settle a few seemingly minor points to let editors and reporters appreciate the dynamism of language and why they must keep abreast of changes in words and phrases in the English language. Were William Shakespeare to return from wherever he had been all these years, I am sure he would find that the English language is less lyrical now than it was in his time. Were he to re-write his plays in modern English, he would feel stumped and abandon the project in anger.

Here we go. Youth was a collective noun used to describe young people aged between 18 and 30 years. It had no plural. There is some confusion about this. On page 15 of the Daily Trust of August 19, we find this headline: “Attack on Ekweremadu by IPOB condemnable – S’East youth.” On page 32 of August 9 issue of the paper, we find this headline: “Eid Kabir: Jos youths, vigilante…”  In one, youth singular and in the other it is plural. It shows the apparent confusion over this simple word. We no longer use youth singular; we use youths plural to describe the same group of young people.

On page 39 of the Daily Trust issue of August 20, we find this headline: “Robbery suspect nabbed impersonating police.” Impersonate and personate have given generations of reporters some unnecessary head ache. In its ordinary meaning, impersonate is not used with a criminal intent. It is to assume, as the dictionary puts it, the character of someone else – as comedies do. On the hand, personate is an act done with a criminal intent. It means to pretend to be someone you are not. The robbery suspect tried to pass himself off as a police man to cheat both the law and his victim. A thin line divides the two words; still the correct word is personate.

The phrase, heavy downpour, appears to have come to stay. I am afraid we have to try and shove it off its perch. It is tautological. Downpour describes a heavy rainfall. You do not need to add heavy to it to tell us how heavy the rainfall was.

Let us now take a few headline goofs. On the front page of the Daily Trust of August 20, we find this headline: “Be prepared to live laborious days, Buhari tells incoming ministers.” The story was published on page 5 of the newspaper. I suppose the president meant to tell his ministers to prepare for difficult days ahead. Ministers are on top of the societal ladder, living as they do, air conditioned lives. Their job could be tough but not tough enough to be laborious. To ask them to live laborious days is to inadvertently reduce them to the level of truck pushers, concrete mixers and sundry others whose lives are not just laborious but brutal. Public officers do not always speak with a certain degree of clarity. The reporter and his editor must clarify such instances for the sake of their readers.

I find this a recurring mistake in the Daily Trust titles. A photograph of an event is separated from the story by two or three pages. It is not right. Photographs are intended to support or illustrate stories and must go together. On page 3 of the same issue of the newspaper, we find the photograph of some human rights activities protesting the detention of the convener of the #RevolutionNow protest, Omoyele Sowore. The story that should have accompanied the photograph was published on page 8 of the newspaper with the headline: “Security operatives disrupt gathering of Soyinka, others in Lagos.”

We find the same treatment of a story and the photograph that should have accompanied it on pages 42 and 44 of the issue of August 19 issue of the paper. The photograph of gang members was published on page 42 and the story was published on page 44. What professionalism has joined together, let no editor or sub-editor put asunder.

On page 28 of the Daily Trust issue of August 21, we find this headline: Ogun: “Pomp, Obasanjo prostrates as new Agura ascends throne in Abeokuta.” I do not know what the headline means. Did pomp accompany the former president to prostrate? The comma is used for enumeration in a headline. The simple story is that the former president prostrated before the new traditional ruler – an act of cultural humility.

On page 23 of the same of the newspaper, we find this headline: “Fear for life reigns in 2 Katsina communities.” The message is that people in the two villages in the state live in fear for their lives. Clarity is the cardinal principle of good headline writing. If a headline confuses the reader, he is not likely to bother himself reading the story. And he might miss an important story.

On page 33 of the Daily Trust issue of August 18, we find this headline: “Farmers, experts rumble over Buhari’s decision on forex for food.” The missing letter ‘g’ has done some violence to the right word. They did not rumble; they grumbled.

On page 35 of the same issue, we find this headline: “Concerns in Enugu over killing of Catholic priest.” Concern does not take a plural. The correct word is concern.

On page 38 of the same issue, we find this headline: “Edo: Have Obaseki, Oshiomhole finally sheathe their swords?” The missing letter? ‘D’ in sheathe.

In its issue of August 9, the Daily Trust published a story of some fishing communities at the mercy of pirates. The headline was: “A/Ibom fishing communities seek protection against sea pirates.” Pirates are criminals who operate on the sea. Let us call them pirates, not sea pirates. The only pirates that operate out of the sea must be the Pyrates Fraternity in our universities when life in the citadels of learning was more fun than it is now. But they were careful enough to distinguish themselves from the sea thieves by calling themselves pyrates, not pirates.

Our public officers are generally fond of making pronouncements that reporters mistake for immediate action. We should be careful about this because we mislead our readers. A good example of this is found on page 4 of the August 20 issue of the newspaper where we find this headline: “Gombe gov declares emergency on education.”

The governor was angry that his state took the 34th position in WAEC examinations and promptly said he was declaring a state of emergency in education to arrest the falling standard. In his anger, he forgot that his state was ahead of two other states. The fact, however, is that he did not declare a state of emergency on education. This is what I get from reading the story. The declaration of a state of emergency in education in the state would be accompanied by a list of intended actions by the governor. We found no such list of intended actions in the story.

I fear that when his anger cools, his excellency would not even revisit the issue because everyone would take it for granted that he has declared a state of emergency in education. We would know how hollow the purported declaration is when the next set of pupils takes exams and the governor finds his state is marching forward on the same spot.