Crash Blossoms

While going through the language log, I came across the phrase "crash blossoms." Apparently these are phrases, often headlines, that almost encourage alternate readings. Websites like the language log as well as www.crashblossoms.com collect headlines from newspapers across the world and nation for entertainment, analysis, or mockery.

For example, one of the most ambiguous recent headlines came from BBC. "Missing women police find remains." Now, if someone was not familiar with the ongoing story of a man who has been killing women with a crossbow and cutting up their bodies (sorry, gruesome), the title can be quite ambiguous. Geoffrey K. Pullum mentions many various problems with the headline. First is that "missing women" can be interpreted as a modifier for "police". In that case, remains were found by female police offers that were previously missing. Or, if you look at "find" as a noun, then some missing female police officers still remain to be found. In reality, what the headline should read is "Police find missing women's remains." There...no extra words, short and sweet, just an addition of an apostrophe and an unscrambling of the words. Was that so hard, BBC editors?

It's understandable that news sources want to keep their headlines concise, yet somewhat informative. Nevertheless, as is told by the language log and other websites, all too often these headlines come out ambiguous and make the editors look foolish. Is there some other motive behind creating such grammar lacking headlines? It's possible that the ambiguity draws more people in. Since you're unsure of what they're talking about, but there are interesting "catch" words in the headline, you'd like to go figure this one out. But even a proper headline still leaves details out, so that itself can draw readers in. Or are these ambiguous headlines a result of quick typing, and a necessity to produce information quickly without having time to edit?

However, these types of crash blossoms can be present anywhere, most frighteningly on warning or prescription labels (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2171). In those cases, a misreading doesn't lead to a simple misunderstanding, but potentially life-threatening actions. If anyone thought grammar wasn't important in language (ehem, language classes that focus only on vocabulary), now you know.

References:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2359

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2171

http://crashblossoms.com

More info:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31FOB-onlanguage-t.html