Reading newspaper articles is an excellent way for foreign learners to build vocabulary and practice comprehension using real material. It can expose you to different topics, and a variety of language that is rare in spoken English. However, newspaper writing is rarely a representation of common English.
Headlines in newspapers, in particular, use different grammar rules to everyday English. This is because they are designed to be short and to attract attention. The following 8 rules are often used to achieve this.
8 Grammar Rules for Newspaper Headlines
1. Use present simple tense for past events
The present tense (it does) is quick and current, and helps emphasise the action happening, rather than its completion.
- Parliament confirms new stray dog policy
- Lion escapes zoo
If we want to demonstrate the result of an action, or that something was completed, we can use perfect tenses (e.g. it has done / it had done), and for changing events, the present continuous may be used (e.g. it is doing). However, these tenses are often shown by using participles alone (e.g. done / doing).
- Lion recaptured earlier today.
- Parliament confirming new policies every day.
2. Leave out auxiliary verbs
With perfect (e.g. has done), progressive (e.g. is doing) and passive structures (e.g. is done), auxiliary verbs are not necessary (e.g. have, is). This makes some headlines appear to be in the past tense, when actually the headlines use past participles, or particles, not the past simple. Similarly, changing events are represented by the present participle on its own.
- New policy decided by Parliament (New policy has been decided by Parliament)
- Lion escapes zoo – ten killed (ten people have been killed / were killed)
- Four stranded in sudden flood (four people have been stranded / were stranded)
- Temperatures rising as climate changes (temperatures are rising)
3. Use infinitives for future events
Using the infinitive (e.g. to do), a future time is not always necessary to demonstrate the future tense in headlines (and likewise, other future tense verbs are not needed).
- Parliament to decide new policy tomorrow (Parliament is to decide / will decide a new policy tomorrow)
- President to visit France for further talks (President is to visit / is going to visit France for further talks later this week)
4. Leave out articles (a, an, the)
- Prime Minister hikes Alps for charity (The Prime Minister hiked the Alps)
- Man releases rabid dog in park (A man released a rabid dog in a park)
5. Leave out “to be”
- Residents unhappy about new road (Residents are unhappy…)
- Family of murder victim satisfied with court decision (Family of murder victim is satisfied…)
6. Leave out “to say”
- Mr Jones: “They’re not taking my house!”
- Bush on Iraqi invasion: “This aggression will not stand.”
Reported speech is usually represented by a colon, or a hyphen, with the subject introduced with ‘on…’. This includes leaving out other verbs such as comment, tell, argue, announce, shout – unless the act of speaking needs emphasising, for instance to demonstrate a promise or official policy.
- Warlord decrees “Peace by Spring.”
7. Replace conjunctions with punctuation
- Police arrest serial killer – close case on abductions
- Fire in bakery: hundreds dead
As with reporting speech, commas, colons, semi-colons, hyphens and so on can replace all conjunctions, or some joining verbs, to join clauses. Commas may also be used to join nouns (more common in American English).
- Man kills 5, self
8. Use figures for numbers
- 9 dead in glue catastrophe
- 7 days to Christmas – shoppers go mad
More Thoughts on Newspaper Headlines
As you can see, the grammar rules for newspaper headlines can lead to ambiguous headlines, as many words are implied and not written. You may also see different vocabulary in headlines, with less common, but concise, verbs, such as bid, vow and spark. There are many additional style issues that certain newspapers use, for instance the capitalisation of every word, or joining conjunctions with commas instead of conjunctions.
The 8 rules here are the most common and consistent used for headline grammar, however. If you’d like to learn more about grammar rules in English, you’ll find plenty more articles freely available on this site, and I always recommend Parrott’s extensive book (aimed at English teachers), and of course there’s the classic Strunk and White style guide.
Seen any headlines you’ve particularly enjoyed, or any rules you’re unsure of? Let me know in the comments below!
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Very interesting information !!! actually I have a question about other features that I notice in the Newspaper articles , why the reporting verb “say” is the most used one in the article ??? and why the passive forme of the verb such as “caused by ” the Auxiliary verb “to be ” is omitted ?
thank you so much ! 🙂
Hi Ammoura. “Say” would be very common as a neutral way to report what is said; typically we would go with the most common/simple reporting verb ‘to say’ unless we really need to add information about the manner that something is said.
For the omission of the auxiliary, the reason would be that if the meaning is still clear then it would be removed for brevity, to make a sentence flow quicker/smoother (if I understand your example correctly – do let me know if that doesn’t add up!).
Thanks a bunch! Admiring – deserves to read.
Now I will say something perhaps controversial. Imagine the following well-known sentence in a title.
“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain”. “Rain in Spain falls mainly on plain”. First the sentence will lose its melody. And since it is a quote, it should not. I do not consider the other aspect of (Rine in Spine falls minely on pline). I have read somewhere that the English sentence melody follows some kind of a “song”. Like “hexameter and pentameter in Latin”. Something like Morse’s alphabet: ‘ˇˇ. If one or two articles fall out, the “song” sounds wrong. In the morning, in the afternoon. How about? In morning, In afternoon. I am not a native speaker. That you can hear. I learned a grammatical rule: Differnece between in hospital and in the hospital. In hospital (for treatment). In the hospital (for a visit). He was taken to hospital (for treatment). Not to the hospital (for treatment).
Certainly, it’s true of a lot of functional language, such as in headlines or in areas such as business reports, function takes priority over how pleasing something is to hear. In fact, in many cases this is actually the purpose of such clipped language – a hard, no-nonsense headline can be clearer and more arresting than a melodic phrase. To your point, “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” is a nice, reflective, pleasant turn of phrase, but if we wanted to get someone’s attention, “Rain in Spain falls on plain” immediately (and more dramatically) conjures an image of something that has happened, inviting the reader to learn more. Though in this case it might not present a particularly exciting item of news, such an approach immediately identifies it as news, rather than an idle observation.
*’By the newspaper rules’*
*don’t use extra word in*
*our newsheadlines*
*_BUT WHY THEY SOMETIMES USE AUXILIARY VERBS IN NEWS HEADLINES (IS,AM,WAS,WERE)_*
*By the newspaper rules, it’s said that we can’t use auxiliary verbs in newspaper headlines.*
*We can only write verbs.*
*So they used the auxiliary verb for this headline.*
*But sometimes I saw (was,were,is) in the newspaper headlines .*
*So why do they use it in the news headlines?*
Why sometimes modals is used in news headlines
Yes, I agree with all you said. It is very logical. Recently I have attempted to translate an article with many photos into English. I had problems with the captions underneath the photos. I had read somewhere that in captions one can leave out ALL ARTICLES unless the text becomes ambiguous. In this way one does more “good than harm”. I removed all articles everywhere. In most cases the texts sounded fine, but in some a bit clumsy. However, after a while I got even got used to the clumsiness.
That’s good – I think in such mediums, particularly when dealing with articles, there can be a certain art to it, requiring practice to feel out where articles are necessary or not. Though it’s a case that in English in general, the articles can be very nuanced and hard to master!
Hey Phil, a lot to learn, as a beginner in English language I need some clarifications/ expanded form of the following:
Police arrest serial killer – close case on abductions
Fire in bakery: hundreds dead
Man kills 5, self
Hi, no problem – sure I can expand these and you can see how each part might apply to the different rules:
Police arrest serial killer – close case on abductions = [The] Police [have] arrest[ed] [a] serial killer [and] close[d] [their] case on [the recent (or some other defining detail)] abductions
Fire in bakery: hundreds dead – there are a few options for this one that would make it a stative sentence, including “[There has been a] fire in [a] bakery[, with] hundreds [of people] dead” or “[A] Fire [has occurred] in [a] bakery[, and] hundreds [of people] [are] dead.”
Man kills 5, self – [A] man [has killed] 5 [people] [and] [him]self”
As you can see, all three of these particularly would actually be two clauses, and lose both conjunctions and verbs in the headline form.
Phil
Thank you Phil, it’s a worth learning; so nice of you.
Thank you for your comments. The use of English articles is (an) art. My mother tongue is Czech and we have no articles. Therefore we have no feeling for them. Even though we learn that the article a (an) comes from the numeral one, and the article the from this or that, it helps little. And then when it comes to the zero article, we have nothing to hold on to. Our only hope is that English does away with articles! Thank you again.
Thank you Phil. Your article reinforced my understanding of ‘headlines writing’ from a course I recently undertook in journalism.
You’re welcome, I’m glad to hear it complemented what you’ve learnt!
May Allah bless upon u, I have brought your two books these are very good. Your works very rich. Thanks
Thank you Robiul, I am glad to have helped and hope the books prove useful!
CONCISE AND EFFECTIVE TEACHING
Thanks for publishing this article!
I understand this is a complex subject and it must be hard to synthetise everything but I find that some parts lack clarity or use words that are hard to understand even for a professional linguist as myself…
Maybe adding some asterisks (stars) to explain those confusing words would help achieve an even more useful article. Those words include: “perfect and progressive structures” (maybe an exemple would be enough)?
If we read this, it’s because we are confused so we are looking for something that adds clarity. Hope this comment will prove useful!
Hi Lilac, thank you for the suggestions – yes sometimes I can take things for granted with these explanations, I will have a look at providing some simple examples to clarify the technical terms, as you say!
appealing………………
Thank you very much from Vietnam for this “8 rules…”. I use it to teach my students ….
You’re welcome, I’m glad it’s helpful!
*’By the newspaper rules’*
*don’t use extra word in*
*our newsheadlines*
*_BUT WHY THEY SOMETIMES USE AUXILIARY VERBS IN NEWS HEADLINES (IS,AM,WAS,WERE)_*
*By the newspaper rules, it’s said that we can’t use auxiliary verbs in newspaper headlines.*
*We can only write verbs.*
*So they used the auxiliary verb for this headline.*
*But sometimes I saw (was,were,is) in the newspaper headlines .*
*So why do they use it in the news headlines?*
As with any rules in language, they’re not absolute and may depend on the newspaper’s style. It may also depend on the story, where it’s important to be particularly clear. Any or all of these rules might be neglected if it makes the headline clearer or fits a particular style.
Hi Phil,
This is brilliant and very helpful, so I am hoping you can help me out with a definitive answer to my quandary of the day: ‘Breaking news: man bites dog’ – is this a compound sentence? Because Breaking news is actually shorthand for News is breaking? I was looking for an example in your post of where the word order was also reversed, but as I couldn’t find one, I’d like to check. I suppose ‘Fire in Bakery’ and ‘Bakery fire’ would kind of be analogous? (except that ‘A bakery has caught fire’ would be an alternative expansion that doesn’t work with Breaking news).
Hi Dani,
That is one way of looking at it, but I’d actually consider “Breaking News” to be more like a tagline/title than part of the headline itself (like, if we had “Special Report:” (labelling it)). Likewise I would see “Bakery Fire” as a label rather than abbreviated form; they’re giving the event a name. This is probably worthy of a point of its own, as this is another characteristic of headlines that doesn’t really fit the grammar changes as such: headlines are prone to creating compound nouns that most simply and clearly define what is happening as an event. So what you’re getting, if we expanded it to a full sentence, wouldn’t be “A bakery has caught fire” but rather “A bakery fire has occurred”. I hope that makes sense?
Phil
Hi, very well written article.
I am working on my site, where I provide gaming news. Your article is helpful to me. I will save it to implement it in my news article writing.
Glad to help!
First of all I express my sincere thanks for this article,,When i started reading to improve my English communication skills many sentences baffled me,i searched again and again for relevant rules now most if my quires have been answered
You’re welcome!
Usually past tense is used in headlines to mean passive voice other than present perfect. You can see all the examples in Rule2.
Hello, I am a journalism student so this is really helpful. I also have some questions. 1: Could you tell me more about number rules. 2: We can’t use a/an/the in headlines so “an average of more 2000 people” is right or wrong? And if it is wrong how can we fix it ?
Sure, what would you like to know about numbers? It’s generally just the case to simplify them, i.e. numerals instead of writing them out.
For 2, and this goes for all the rules really, it’s not a hard rule, more a case to remove articles where possible, so it can be okay to keep it depending on your style. But this could be clipped as with the other examples, “average more than 2000 people” / “average over 2000 people” (or reversed to be a little clearer, perhaps, “over 2000 people average”).
In articles, should we avoid using isn’t, aren’t, there’s, etc., which are abbreviations of subjects and verbs, and instead write “is not”? Is it okay to use auxiliary verbs and abbreviated forms of not in articles? I know that the use of abbreviations should generally be avoided, but I wonder if auxiliary verbs are an exception.
This will depend entirely on the publication really; it’s a choice of how formal you want the article to be. Less formal publications may use contractions, while more formal ones won’t. So in theory it can be okay to use them, but it depends on the chosen style.
Hi Phil, thanks for the article and all resources in here. Yesterday, I gave a Sports headline by taking out the verb but now I am doubting myself. Originally, the copy said tournament X will begin on June 1 in France. To mask the future date, I gave: “Tournanent X in France”. My proofreader insists it should say “… to begin in France”
Hi Kumar,
I think this depends a little on the context and what information you want the information to convey. Ostensibly for a headline you don’t need anything connecting the date (e.g. Tournament X in France June 1), though that’s optional, you could use ‘to begin’, or the present simple ‘begins’. If you’re leaving out the date itself as not important then I don’t see why you couldn’t simply have “Tournament X in France”, but if it’s important that it hasn’t begun yet then it might be worth including that some way (alternatives to the date would be a verb showing it is still to come, e.g. ‘coming to France’ or ‘to begin/open/start’ as suggested, or descriptors like ‘Upcoming Tournament X in France’). It’s all dependent on how you want to present/summarise the information of the article…
Phil