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A great deal about the world around us is shaped by newspaper headlines, not by the content of them as much as by the shape of them on the page.
In Egyptian hieroglyphics the name of a king is always shown in a cartouche, a round-cornered box around it. I bet in those times nobody ever used the phrase King Tut because King Tut is an invention of headline writers. The name Tutankhamen is not only difficult to pronounce it is also very long. Because it is very long it constrains the size of letters that can be used in a headline. In writing a headline the shorter the word the bigger the letters can be. Think about the classic newspaper front pages, huge headlines using short words, one word to a line.
JFK |
KING |
NIXON: |
OK, one was made up, but I hope you get the picture. The shorter the word the bigger the impact that can be made with a headline or poster board. Because shorter words have more impact newspaper journalists and sub-editors want to make them popular and acceptable even before the opportunity to use them splashed across the front page arises. People with long names who are likely to be newsworthy have to be given shorter names, whether they like it or not. General Eisenhower is far to long a name, 9 letters is far too many to be tolerated so a nickname was imperative. I can imagine some journalist being tasked to find out an alternative name “Find out what his men call him, if we can print it, if not find out what his mistress calls him, or his hairdresser or his driver. Anybody, but get me a name, 5 letters max.”
“Ike! I love it, only three letters, there's a promotion in this for you!”
Have you ever noticed how so many prominent US politicians with names longer than an acceptable seven letters have got nicknames? It is surely no coincidence that Carter, Reagan and Ford did not generate nicknames or become known by their initials while Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Hubert Horatio Humphrey did.
Why do you think Gary Hartpence decided to become Gary Hart? This is a classic. A double four letter name, crisp and distinctive, easy to pronounce, easy to read, a name made for headlines. Literally, I have no doubt.
While Dubya is longer than W, or Bush, it is shorter than George. It is the length of the longest word that counts, not the shortest or the average, the number of words doesn't matter as much. Once a name is five letters or fewer there is little incentive to make it shorter because there are few verbs that are significantly shorter.
Why is Superman Superman while Spider-Man is Spider hyphen man? You could say that one was DC Comics and one was Marvel but surely the real answer is that the Daily Planet is not a real newspaper run by a real newspaperman while the Daily Bugle is run by a man with ink running through his veins.
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Picture the scene. J Jonah Jameson's office, a sub-editor is hauled before the boss “What have you gone and done here? Spiderman. One word. Are you crazy? Do you want to ruin this paper? Nine letters? How many of our readers can handle nine letter words? Don't answer that. How many of our readers want to read a line that long? Break it up. A hyphen. But that's still too long. Spider hyphen is too long. I've got it. Today the city is threatened by Spidey. Six letters. That will work.” |
Stan Lee is a genius. Six letters, that's a bit long. Can't we find a shorter word for genius?
Certain words have been deemed too long for headlines and so they have been replaced by shorter words, often words which only have a life within headlines. What the hell is a probe? Who apart from print journalists uses the word quiz as a verb? Who but a headline writer could call a guitarist an axe hero? Who put a headline writer would call an astrophysicist a boffin a or Prof? Who but a headline writer would regard the word comedian as being in urgent need of shortening to comic? Who but a headline writer calls a teacher sir? These people have no shame, they will even stoop to importing the French word coup because it is shorter than revolution or revolt.
No radio journalist would ever contemplate saying “ and now over to ess double-yew nineteen for the tennis” but SW19 is four letters wide while Wimbledon is nine. Game set and match.
The City of London has been shortened to The City. It wasn't necessary to rename Wall Street, as long as you remember that St is an acceptable abbreviation in print.
How many new words and phrases are suspiciously shorter than the words they replace? Now that it is no longer PC (an obvious abbreviation) to use the words homo, queer or poof newspaper journalists have embraced gay, it might be anathema to them politically but isn't it really petite and bijou? Bona bonus.
You can tell when you are really famous when journalists invent a shorter name for you. Charlotte Church became Lotte, Wayne Rooney became Roo (3), David Hasselhoff became The Hoff (4), David and Victoria Beckham became Posh and Becks (only five letters remember, it is the length of the longest word that counts) Schumacher became Schuey or even Schu (depending on the length of the next longest word in the headline). Billy Connolly became the Big Yin (3), Paul McCartney became Macca (5) while Lady Heather Mills McCartney became Mucca (Macca's wife with the mucky past, a hint towards pornography and/or prostitution, allegedly). Jennifer Lopez is too long, she's no Jenny (whether she's from the block or not) so obviously she becomes J-Lo, which while only three letters counts as four for the purposes of laying out type.
Sylvester Stallone is a huge star, so huge he can get away with three letters. The sly mumbler. Bigger than Jesus and a letter shorter are The Fab Four. Hang on, 'Beatles' is a massive seven letters, that is asking for truncation but Elvis found five letters were too many and became four as The King, a dead heat with Ol' Blue Eyes.
The artist formerly known as Prince tried too hard with his squiggle and was rightly rebuffed which surely leaves the world champion in typographical economy without ambiguity must go to the mother of Wills and Harry: Di. But with a name so short she inevitably ran out of appropriate verbs.
In British politics we have truncated Margaret Thatcher (8) to Maggie (6) or The Iron Lady (4). Michael Heseltine became Tarzan, or Hezza. John Prescott has become Prezza, on the model of footballer Paul Gascoigne becoming Gazza.
Was it the public or sub-editors who decided children (8) would become kids (4)? Was it the public or journalists who decided to commandeer the word drug and stop it being interchangeable with the word medicine? This has reached the point in Britain where we cannot use the word drug to refer to legal substances without a qualifying adjective such as legal or prescription.
I don't think the general public would automatically think sex rat when they hear about adultery, or love child when they think about a bastard. The estate agent would call it a bijou pied-a-terre, the journalist a love nest suitable for a romp, a place to bonk. I can think of a better phrase, two four letter words that alliterate nicely, but Britain is not yet ready for such headlines, and Americans wouldn't know what was meant by a flat.
The word marijuana is far too long, and too foreign too so British journalists decided not to touch it. Cannabis, is more accurate (the correct Latin genus) and it is a letter shorter. If they want to go shorter they choose dope or pot. Which left the rather obvious common name of hemp to be used exclusively for legal products of cannabis sativa, hemp is not a drug.
The world of newspaper headline writers would be improved if we could invent some new short words, five letters or fewer, to some up the following concepts:-
“will announce in a speech later today (that we've read the press release of) that”
“irretrievably broken down their widely acknowledged sexual relationship, carefully conducted negotiations or peace talks” what about boff? As in Ken and Barbie: Boff? The word is suggestive of bugger, it's all off.
“dies of cancer” (cancer = 6 The Big C = 3) How about the verb to cank, to die of the effects of or complications in the treatment for a malignant tumour. Axe Hero Canks being the story when the rhythm guitarist (1965-7) of some second rate group that had three top forty hits before 1970 dies.
“conducts homosexual pseudo-marriage” Pink. He pinks, they pink everybody pinks and don't forget to come to the pinking. If lesbians want something different they can have murple, a word I have invented specifically to annoy poets. And why not? The bastards. After a murpling the two brides go on their morange. And to annoy poets even more how about the work poink, which means to fly through the air like sweet-smelling thistledown, or to behave in a way entirely unlike a pig, or to ask a Rabbi to tea.
and one for use by the general population too, I can't believe we have tolerated this clumsy phrase for so long: “commits suicide”. To kurt, which would allow kurtun to be an instrument of self deliverance which would give a brace of duelling pistols the possibility to become a pair of kurtuns.