On headlines.

My undergraduate degree is in print journalism. But I was never good at writing headlines. On an exam, when given a story about a beer contest, I came up with:

Guinness Gives Good Head

My professor was not amused. However, it was not the worst I ever came up with. When given a story about a local teacher dying, and told to write a two deck headline with a specific character count, I came up with:

Teacher Dies
Due to Death

It was the nadir of my headline-writing career. (Note, however, how the characters line up; this was, perhaps, the only good thing about this headline.)

Fortunately, I was a better copy editor than I was a headline-writer. When people put errors in headlines, I caught 'em. Not so with my professor. Well, at least on one occasion. She told the following story:

As head copy editor working the night shift for the early edition, she was ultimately in charge of everything that was printed in said early edition. Prior to print, when the layout team was just filling space, they would put in mock-ups, or what are called "dummy" headlines or "heds." Imagine her chagrin when the following headline went to print:

Dummy Hed For Dummy Story

Quite tragically, the story happened to be about special education kids. Although my she was called into the publisher's office the next morning, she was not fired.

Nonetheless, it's amusing to see that these sort of things still happen.