The devil is everywhere. It has more pikins than you would ever care to know. It is there pushing a perfectly sane man to sleep with his teenaged daughter. It is there where the randy bastard defiles a six-year old child. It is everywhere leading men and women astray. And it is there in newspaperdom, causing editors and especially sub-editors, some anguish when things that should not go wrong in the printed copies of newspapers do so.
The devil’s pikin in the newspaper goes by the rather misleading name of printer’s devil. The printer may own it but it is not its victim. Editors and sub-editors are. The devil peers over the shoulders of sub-editors and manages to induce them to sometimes forget the basic rules of grammar and headline casting. I have occasionally offered you some examples in the Goofs this time series in this column. The purpose is to remind you of the need to maintain eternal vigilance, to, you got, keep out the devil and its misleading tricks.
Let us see some of the handiwork of the devil pikin in the Daily Trust and its weekly sibling. Beginning with this Goofs this time series, I am introducing what I call creative and fun headlines. These are the headline that, in my opinion, are truly memorable.
Daily Trust, February 20, 2019. The front page lead headline reads: “Why Saturday’s election failed.” The election could not have failed because it was not conducted as scheduled on February 16. It was postponed.
On page 3 of the same issue of the newspaper, we find this headline: “Electoral offenders shall be punished with Electoral Act – INEC chair.” What the commission would do is to try persons charged with electoral offences under the provisions of the Electoral Act. To try them with the Electoral Act is to suggest that the act is an offender too.
On page 5 of the same issue, we find this headline: “Maina: EFCC vows to appeal court judgement.” Newspaper reporters and editors and sub-editors love nothing more than creating the impression of a mini war where there is none. Vow and explode are commonly used in this way to suggest that a belligerent party is fighting back. What the commission intends is to appeal the judgement. Simple.
On page 11 of the same issue, we find this headline: “Two decomposing corpses litter Aba streets.” Two corpses hardly have the capacity to do that. They cannot litter one street, let alone streets in Aba. The two corpses were abandoned on a street in the town. Our purpose should not be to frighten our readers but to tell them factual stories. It is not helpful to dress up a simple story with a headline that frightens people.
On page 21, we find this headline: “Mercedes-Benz sells 180,539 vehicles, January.”
The comma is used in a headline to represent a missing word in an elliptical sentence. The comma in such cases does the work of the word and where there is enumeration. If you substitute and for the comma in this headline, we have a problem because it would erroneously suggest that the car company sold so many cars and the month of January. The most appropriate word here would be in. It should have been used instead of the comma to give us: “Mercedes-Benz sells 180,539 cars in January.”
The comma can be problematic where it is either absent or wrongly placed in a headline. Here is another instance of the missing comma on page 43 of its February 12 issue. In Eugene Enahoro’s opinion column, we find this: “After the election what next?” There are only five words in that sentence. Should we pause in reading it? I am afraid, so. It should have read: “After the voting, what next?”
The Egyptian strong man, President El-Sisi, appears to be manipulating the law to sit tight. The Daily Trust of February 17, page 20, reported this with this headline: “El-Sisi may rule Egypt until April 2034 under parliamentary plan.” The story was that parliament was set to pass new constitutional amendments to let the president have his way. Some African presidents are luckier than others. They can have as many terms as they want.
On page 43 of the Daily Trust of February 12, we find this headline: “Comes the revolution.” What are we, the readers, supposed to make of that? That a rat ate up part of the headline? Perhaps, the sub-editor wanted to write: “Here comes the revolution.” Always say what you mean. No sub-editor is allowed to enjoy the linguistic privilege of Alice in Alice in Wonderland.
February 11, page 5: “Bolaji Akinyemi worries over polls.” It should be: “Bolaji Akinyemi worried over polls.” The missing word here is is.
Brevity is the soul of a good newspaper headline. Sometimes when we ignore that rule we are guilty of superfluity. Here is an example of that in the February 11, page 42 issue of the newspaper: “Drug dealer jailed for nine years.” For is the superfluous word here. “Drug dealer jailed nine years,” is better.
Here is a good example of what happens when the printer’s devil’s attention is distracted. February 10, page 8: “Kogi health sector sick as doctors flee state.” It is my example of a creative headline.
Here is an example of the type of headline that makes you hit your forehead in confusion. February 19, page 33: “Livestock change drive to hit N8tr in 2028, FG plan reveals.” I hit my forehead, cracked my brain but I still could not get it.
February 7, page 8: “Encomium as Ohinoyi of Igbira clocks 90.” Encomiums is the correct word. Here again, the comma is missing. It should be: “Encomiums, as Ohinoyi of Igbira clocks 90.”
I take us back to the Daily Trust issue of December 18, 2018. I saw the teeth marks of the rat in this editorial headline: “Healthcare for elderly.” A missing word can cause problems. As is stands, it is incomplete because the word “elderly” should qualify a noun: elderly patients. But if the rat did not play its trick the headline should have been: “Healthcare for the elderly.”
The word why is the most frequently used word in headlines in the Trust titles. “Why we killed ex-defence chief;” “Why NCC directive worries telcos.” My point is that it is unimaginative. I would prefer readers to find out the why in the body of the story. It should be possible for our sub-editors not to casually resort to the use of this word often as a one-size-fits-all headline short hand. Use it sparingly, if you must.
In this digital age, some errors are inexcusable because the computer has more eyes than the octopus has hands. I have found several instances of stories repeated on either the same page or facing pages of some issues of the Daily Trust. See pages 12 and 13 of January 28. Page 12: “CJN: A/Ibom elders demand Buhari’s resignation.
Page 13: “A/Ibom elders demand Buhari’s resignation.” Pages 12 and 13 are facing pages.
February 4, page 43: “A tales of two debates.” Both debates could do with just one tale, I think.
The newspaper is a very accommodating medium. It accepts the serious and the frivolous. You can find what makes you weep and also what makes you laugh loudly in the headlines. Here is the most amusing headline I picked out on page 25 of the January 1 issue of the Daily Trust: “Fed-up wife lists her husband for sale on eBay for just N7,000.”
I hope there were takers. I can see that the monetary value of husbands is on the decline. Be careful, brother. You too could be auctioned off on eBay if the house feeding money is stuck in your pockets.
