•March 16 2022•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

I’ve been drowning in emails about headlines lately so, today, I’ll try to shed some light on them.
The emails haven’t been about political slants, sensationalism or misspellings in headlines but rather how to interpret them.
As I’ve noted on a number of occasions, headlines are an art form. They’re not easy to do well, especially in one- or two-column spaces.

Tense
“Newspaper headlines state that a person dies, when the person died. It’s not an ongoing action, but finished, complete, done,” wrote reader Deborah Gaither. “Take the headline: ‘Colin Powell, exemplary general stained by Iraq claims, dies.’”
I’ve known since the days I unabashedly wore inch-wide leather ties to work that headlines are written in a form of present tense, but I don’t recall ever being asked why — or bothering to investigate.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.