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So bad that it's wonderful

Posted by TheFallen on March 25, 2002

In Reply to: Polysemous though she wants a cracker posted by Bob on March 25, 2002

: : From editorandpublisher.com
: : MARCH 25, 2002

: : Copy Editors May Be the Most Polysemous
: : The Phenomenon Of Punny Headlines

: : By Wayne Robins

: : NEW YORK -- Headline writers, caption scribblers, and copy editors may be the most polysemous people on Earth. So concludes Valerie Collins, who has a fascinating article about journalism and acts of polysemy in the most recent edition of The Vocabula Review (www.vocabula.com), an erudite online journal dedicated to excellence in the English language.

: : But first: Polysemy? "The phenomenon of having or being open to several different meanings," speaketh Webster. Puns and their cute cousins, paragrams, are vehicles for polysemous expression. "Sidebars, subtitles, leads, and picture captions provide ... opportunities for extended punning," Collins explains mainly in the plain (she lives in Barcelona, Spain).

: : "Admittedly," she wrote, "the dividing lines between true wit, cleverness ... and groan-induction are fuzzy." It's so much a matter of individual taste that using such tools is really in the I of the beholder.

: to parrot the conventional wisdom, puns are the lowest fume of hammer, but are puns alone solo?

There is a tabloid daily newspaper in the United Kingdom known as The Sun. It's the largest-selling daily newspaper by far, owing to its combination of dumbing down the news and showing nubile young ladies in a state of upper déshabillée whenever possible. (Personally I believe it's extremly cunningly executed to work on about 5 different levels, but I'm probably self-deluded). The headline writers there are compulsive polysemists, although rarely clever. However, once in a Scottish soccer match, when Caledonian Thistle (nicknamed Cally, a backwoods semi-amateur team) beat the mighty Glasgow Celtic (champions of Scottish soccer) by a score of 3 goals to 1, the sports headline writers came up with this gem that is so brazenly contrived as to be a real jewel. Half the back page the following morning was taken up with this headline:

"Super Cally Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious".

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