Headlinese is nonconversational, abbreviated writing style used in newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 headline

Headline

The headline is the text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a...

s.

Syntax

Because space is limited, headlines are written in a compressed telegraphic style

Telegram style

Telegram style, telegraph style, or telegraphic style describes a clipped way of writing that attempts to abbreviate words and pack as much information into the shortest possible number of words and or characters....

, using special syntactic conventions:

• Forms of the verb "to be"
  Zero copula
  Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship...
  
   are omitted.
• Articles
  Article (grammar)
  An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
  
   are usually omitted.
• Most verbs are in the simple present tense, e.g. "Governor signs bill".
• The future is expressed as "to" followed by a verb
  Verb
  A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
  
  , e.g. "Governor to sign bill".
• Conjunctions
  Grammatical conjunction
  In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...
  
   are often replaced by a comma, as in "Bush, Blair laugh off microphone mishap".

Headlines are generally sentence

Sentence (linguistics)

In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...

s or noun phrase

Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....

s.

Short forms

Individuals are usually named by their last name only, with no honorific

Honorific

An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title...

s.

Organizations and institutions are often named by metonymy

Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...

: "Wall Street" for "the financial industry", "Whitehall" for the UK government administration, "Madrid" for "the government of Spain", the "Davos" for "World Economic Forum", and so on.

Headlines use many contraction

Contraction (grammar)

A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

s and abbreviation

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

s: in the USA, for example, Pols (for "politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

s"), Dems (for "Democrats

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

"), GOP (for the Republican Party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

, from the nickname "Grand Old Party"), Govt for government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

; in the UK, Lib Dems (for the Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...

), Tories

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

(for the Conservative Party

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

). Some periodicals have their own distinctive headline styles, especially Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

and its entertainment-jargon headlines such as "Sticks nix hick pix

Sticks nix hick pix

STICKS NIX HICK PIX was a headline printed in Variety, a newspaper covering Hollywood and the entertainment industry, on July 17, 1935, over an article about the reaction of rural audiences to movies about rural life...

".

Commonly used short words

Headlines use many short words that are not common in spoken English:

• chop
• confab (meeting)
• curb
• duo
• eye (consider)
• gal
• garner
• guy
• hike
• hit
• hype
• ink (sign a contract)
• lull
• mull (consider)
• nab
• nix
• parley (meeting)
• pen (write)
• pose
• probe (investigation)
• quiz (as a verb)
• rap
• revel
• rout
• see (forecast)
• slam
• stun
• temblor (earthquake)
• tout (endorse)
• unrest
• vie
• woe

Custom

The vocabulary and grammatical constructs used in headlines have become so culturally ingrained that they are often encountered even where there are no space constraints, for example in internet

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 news agencies

News agency

A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...

' headlines.

See also

• Headline
  Headline
  The headline is the text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a...
  
  
• Copy editing
  Copy editing
  Copy editing is the work that an editor does to improve the formatting, style, and accuracy of text. Unlike general editing, copy editing might not involve changing the substance of the text. Copy refers to written or typewritten text for typesetting, printing, or publication...
  
  
• Corporate jargon
  Corporate jargon
  Corporate jargon lists jargon often used in business communication of corporations. A slang type or form is called "corporatese." Corporate jargon is not confined to business and can also be found in education and government departments.- Initialisms :...
  
  
• Crash blossom, an ambiguous headline
• Ellipsis
  Ellipsis
  Ellipsis is a series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence...
  
  , omission of words

Further reading

• Headlinese : on the grammar of English front page headlines , Ingrid Mard , ISBN 9140047539 (pbk.) , Lund studies in English