Odd

I've just seen the face of the next person I'm going to fall in love with and marry.

That, or I'm very tired and hallucinated for a split second a Robin Jacques illustration that I don't remember ever seeing.

Could be either one, but I haven't been sleeping a lot lately, so I'm leaning towards #2.

But just in case I'm going to keep a close eye on anyone new I meet who has a snub nose, freckles, and short, curly ginger hair...

noun stacks BAD!

This is a small example of why phrasing is important and why noun stacks are bad.

A local news station has reported on a historical land issue in Virginia. Their headline:

Va. site of Pocahontas rescue will be preserved

The lead paragraph reads:

GLOUCESTER, Va. (AP) -- A farm field overlooking the York River in Tidewater Virginia is believed to be where Pocahontas interceded with her powerful father Powhatan to rescue English Capt. John Smith from death.

Their Twitter service, promoting the article, posted the following:

The Virginia site where it's believed #Pocahontas was rescued will be preserved forever.

See what happened there? The noun stack ("Pocahontas rescue") caused the person writing the tweet to completely reverse history, turning Pocohontas into the person being rescued, instead of the person doing the rescuing.

First of all, it shows that the writer didn't grow up in Virginia, as we get that story with our mother's milk (the beautiful Indian maid, throwing herself across the body of the ruggedly handsome Englishman to save his life from her father's warriors).

Second, it demonstrated the pernicious effect of trying to save a tiny amount of time or headline space by using one or more nouns as if they were adjectives, instead of just using a wee preposition of (shockhorror) an actual adjective.

Headline writers are all taught to try to cram the whole story into five words or less, but nothing is served by this. It makes it harder, not easier, to understand what's really in the story, and it often twists the meaning of what's being summarized, though not always 180* as in this case.


(And, WTF has happened to LJ lately? It's latest series of "improvements" and the increasing dearth of content may finally be enough to drive me away for good.)