The Features of English News Headlines

Abstract

With the gradual deepening of the opening policy and the entry the WTO, the Chinese people are more eager to know the world and to be known by the world. A large amount of information is transmitted by news media especially English news reports.

Headline is the essential part of news report. As few people have enough time to read the news from the beginning to the end, most readers try to know as much information as they can in the shortest possible time.

And a good news headline plays a role of icing on the cake and making the finishing touch of the report and most importantly, it may catch the attention of the readers. Reading news headlines is the first step of reading English newspapers. Due to the special style of news, its headlines have long developed their own unique characteristics. So this thesis is intended to introduce some features of English news headlines, covering lexical features, grammatical features, rhetorical features and how to use the punctuation. Besides, in the international news, English news counts for a large proportion and

headlines are treated as a summary of the news. In order to catch the readers’

attention, the editors always use a variety of techniques to enhance the attraction of the headlines, which brings enormous challenges to readers for English news headlines. In order to understand the English headlines well, readers should learn the features of English headlines.

【Key Words】English news headlines; features

Introduction

A piece of news is composed by three parts: headline，leading and body among which a headline is the epitome and highlight of the content of newspapers and periodicals.

Headlines printed on the papers are the windows of the news and it can let readers know it is worth reading .it is essential for readers to understand headlines to decide which column should be read while which not.

In this paper, features of using vocabulary , tense and voice，omission of words and using of various rhetoric of headlines from English newspapers and periodicals are approached for the purpose of giving a better understanding of the contents of news and improving English learners’ reading ability.

Chapter 1 Brief Introduction of English News Headlines

Now in the information age, news begins to play a more and more important

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role in our daily life. It provides people with the latest news in the world. A piece of news is usually composed of a headline, a lead and a body. Especially, the headline is the eye of a piece of news. Because people do not have enough time to read through the whole news, they just look through the headline of the news to guess what it is talking about. So it is important to understand the definition, function and feature of a news headline.

1.1 Definition of English News Headlines

When reading a newspaper, one should first read a headline. As an indispensable part of news, headlines are compared to the eyes of news. Many journalists, scholars and books have defined the concept of a news headline. So this paper has collected some different versions of definition of a news headline. “A news headline's caption printed at the top of a page or article in a newspaper, usually in large bold letters and often summarizing the content that follows it.”(Encarta Dictionary) “A head of a newspaper story or article，usually printed in large type and devised to summarize the story or article that follows.” (Longman Dictionary of the English Language) “A head of a newspaper story or article usually printed in large type and devised to summarize, give essential information about, or let readers in reading the story or article that follows.”(Webster Third New International Dictionary) “报纸新闻标题用来概括，评价新闻的内容，帮助读者阅读和理解新闻。”（《辞海》）“A headline is any line or collection of lines of display type that precedes a story to introduce or summarize it.\" (Westly, 1972:141) From the above, we can know that news headlines are defined according to their roles, functions and features. So in order to fully understand the definition of a news

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headline, we have to first know the functions and features of a news headline.

1.2 Functions of English News Headlines

We should pay attention tothe functions of English news headlines. It is important for us to understand the news headlines. Generally speaking, English news headlines have the following functions: summarizing the news, attracting readers, attention, commenting on the news and dressing up the page.

1.2.1 Summarizing the news

Naturally, people buy newspapers in order to get the information that they want to know, but there are kinds of different newspapers published every day. Even a newspaper has several pages with each containing many items. Most of people do not have enough time to read through the whole newspaper. Therefore, many readers have formed the habit of scanning news headlines, which makes possible rapid news comprehension. Thus the first and most important purpose of headlines is to let the readers understand the news quickly.

Readers can grasp the essentials of news. Good news headlines should contain such elements of a news event such as the time, place, cause, result and background.

1.2.2 Attracting readers' attention

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As the beginning of the news, a news headline is designed to fulfill many functions especially that it must attract the readers‟attention. A headline, which does not arouse interest at first glance, is not a good one. A bad headline will make the readers‟eyes feel bad and change immediately to another news on the same page or even to another newspaper. When readers open a newspaper, the first thing that catches their eyes is the headline. So the determining factor as to

whether a certain news will be read or passed by is usually the headline. Good headlines are excellent advertisements for the news. They are striking; they attract attention; they arouse interest; they lead the readers into the news, which is what every good headline should do.

Chapter 2 the features of words in the English news

2.1 the wording

The news headline is brief text with eye-catching content in the news, so it is concise and vivd. Therefore, the author often uses the term, short term, buzzword and acronyms. As the result, the English news headlines are greatly enriched, which can produce the effect that attract readers' attention. .

2.1.1, nouns and short words often are used in English news headlines.

Nouns with strong expressive function are not only informative, but also has a syntax compatibility. It can be regarded as various types of parts of speech, such as

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the role of adjectives, verbs, adverbs and so on. It can also form complete syntactic concept with simple and clear expression. For example:

Colin Powell’s Swan-Song: View of the World

The Population Surprise

Apart from nouns, English news title prefer selecting short words or words whose letters less to adjust the space. These words are not only short and eye-catching, but also lively and concise, which can give person sonorous and forceful feeling. For example:

Aid = assistance help

Blast = explode explosion

End= terminate the end, stop

2.1.2, for the propaganda effect into account, the news style pursuit the novelty, so news use all kinds of way for eye-catching. The feature is firstily reflected in the news headlines. In English news, buzzword is too numerous to cite. For example:

What Is Dateline?

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The Sandbaggers.

Cold-Fighting Drug May Be Used Against SARS

Asia Pledge Action on Bird flu

Yahoo Awards World’s Best Cyber cafés

2.1.3, English news headlines often use the abbreviation especially the acronyms to replace the long words or long phrases. Such as the name of some important institutions and terminology commonly are replaced by acronyms:

Former Spanish Finanse Minister Elected New IMF Chief

IMF = International Monetary Fund

Former Burger Flipper to McDonald 's CEO

Executive director of the CEO = chief Executive Officer

SARS = Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

2.2 rhetoric

A variety of rhetorical devices are often used in English news headlines. As a

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result of it, the headlines are vivid, image, humor and irony. For example:

2.2.1 Metonymy: It is substituting the name of one thing fow that of another with which it is closely associated. (1)e.g. A Royal Pain For the Crown

Here crown is not the real crown but indicate the Queen.

(2)e.g. Uncle Sam’s Island

Uncle Sam is nearly known to all. It is another informal sayings of American government or Americans.

Metonymy can avoid repeating certain words and strengthen the affection，so it is used largely in modern newspaper，even some of metonymies become to be public words, such as White House, Bucking Ham Palace, Downing Street, Motor City, and so on.

The way can set people thinking and increase the readability of the serious topic.

2.2.2 Antithesis: rhyme pays attention to the form, and antithesis pays attention to the content. In the title, it is the way of using lexical comparison to highlight the contents of the article. e.g. U.S. is Long on Game Shows，Short on Foreign News, which cause comparing semantically and enhance the expressiveness of the language.

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2.2.3 Pun: the language on the surface is a meaning, but secretly hidden another meaning. Puns are often in irony，humorous headlines. If they are used proper this trend would be stronger.

(1)e.g. “ The Sun Sets For the Last Time”

“It tells us an English newspaper in Hong Kong called sun is stop coming out. The ‘sun’ here is a pun.”[7] p111

(2)e.g. “African Statesman Still Sowing Seeds for Future”

“This report is about Julius Nyerere，president of Tansonia，who is sowing seeds happily in his hometown where is far from big cities after retired. But Africa is unsteady thus many international leaders go all the way to learn from him the ways of saving a country. So he is still sowing seeds for the future of Africa. ‘Sowing seeds’ is a pun in this headline.”

Chapter three Tense and voice of headline

Verbs show actions. A piece of news will be rEinforced and animous if a verb is used properly. As for our forEIgn readers, although its merits, it is more difficult to understand. Verbs have their own tenses .So are ones in headlines. But headlines must short and accurate, so the verbs in them have special tense showing methods. English headlines do not use past tense but present tense, thus readers feel they are in the situation and the news is in time, this called Journalistic Present

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Tense, the same as Historical Present Tense in literature. Above all, headlines often use three kind of tense.

3.1 Use of the simple present tense

In news, present tense is often used to describe things happened just now, that is to say, it is used to instead of past tense.

English learners should pay attention to this situation, do not consider present tense in headlines as they usually are.

e.g. Comeback Gives China A Sensational Thomas Cap Win (The Comeback gave China a sensational Thomas Cup Win.)

3.2 Use of the simple future tense

The simple future tense describes things will be happen in the future. The forms of future tense are “will (shall) do”, “be going to do” “be to do” “be about to do” and so on. But in English headlines “be to do” form in which “be” is omitted is used most. So in headlines “to do” forms express writers’ prediction of future trends.

e.g. Bands to Gather For Jazz Festival (Bands are to gather for Jazz Festival.)

3.3 Use of the present progressive tense

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Present Progressive Tense emphasizes certain thing is doing at present time and its result is not known at now. Also “be” is usually omitted for the need of shortness.

e.g. Sino--British Partnership Progressing (Sino--British Partnership is Progressing)

3.4 Use of passive voice

When verbs in headlines should use passive voice , the “be” in“be + participle” form and the operator followed “by” are usually omitted. Thus the only left past participle can give a passive meaning directly in headlines, learners must not confused passive voice as past tense.

e.g. Demolition Regulation Welcomed (Demolition regulation is welcomed.)

Conclusion

In the thesis, we have disscussed the features of English news headlines, then we have a general ideal of how to understand the news headlines and can distinguish the differences of the grammer between English news headlines and the conventional English. However, as English major students, We still have much more difficult because apart from the features of the language, the profound cultural background comes to behind the news headlines. Therefore, it is extremely important to get to know the culture and people’s way of thinking in

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the English countries. The knowledge covers politics, economy, military, diplomacy, culture, sports and celebrities. Lacking the knowledge may cause the difficulty in understanding.

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