{"id":15650,"date":"2025-07-10T11:36:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T11:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=15650"},"modified":"2025-07-10T12:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T12:06:06","slug":"ambiguity-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=15650","title":{"rendered":"Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/dictionary.cambridge.org\/dictionary\/english\/ambiguity\">dictionary definition of ambiguity<\/a> is &#8220;<em>the fact of something having more than one possible meaning and therefore possibly causing confusion<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Any sensible person would therefore believe that ambiguity has no place in a newspaper headline.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>However, newspapers are not written nowadays by sensible people: or so it would seem.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is exacerbated by the modern media practice of trying to cram the entire story into the headline in a condensed form, as shown by the screenshot below of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailypost.co.uk\/news\/north-wales-news\/prisoner-run-smiley-face-tattoo-32012410\">this piece<\/a> from the Daily Post, a title in the Reach plc stable which serves the north of Cymru.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2025\/07\/on_run.png\" alt=\"Headline - Prisoner on run with smiley face tattoo and links to North Wales\" width=\"600\" height=\"475\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2025\/07\/on_run.png 600w, https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/23\/2025\/07\/on_run-300x238.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p>\r\n\r\n<\/p><p>For the benefit of passing illiterate Reach &#8216;journalists&#8217;, an unambiguous version of the headline would read &#8220;<em>Prisoner with smiley face tattoo and links to North Wales on run&#8221;<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It has since been rumoured that the smiley face tattoo has been recaptured by police. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The dictionary definition of ambiguity is &#8220;the fact of something having more than one possible meaning and therefore possibly causing confusion&#8220;. Any sensible person would therefore believe that ambiguity has no place in a newspaper headline. However, newspapers are not written nowadays by sensible people: or so it would seem. This is exacerbated by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32],"tags":[36,16,10,22,33],"class_list":["post-15650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-media","tag-comment","tag-english-usage","tag-facepalm","tag-language","tag-media-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15650"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15660,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15650\/revisions\/15660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}