Examples of crash blossoms wanted
February 6, 2010
This post at Comment Central on The Times website explains the origin of the neologism ‘crash blossoms’, can you think of any examples.
Classics quoted include:-
Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel
MacArthur Flies Back to Front
Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
British Left Waffles on Falklands
Grandmother of eight makes hole in one
Drunks Get Nine Months in Violin Case
William Kelly was fed secretary
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
House passes gas tax onto senate
Farmer bill dies in house
Do we have any suitable local ones?
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by the way, Adam, a friend of mine in California, last name FULLER, has created a new subspecies of strange or humorous headlines and we are calling their Crash Fullers as a new coinage. These are headlines that read correctly, are not like the strangely worded crash blossoms we all now like to joke about, but these Crash Fullers contain a person’s first or last name in the headline such as a recent NYTimes headline that reads:
CHINA ASKS FOR FULLER PARTICIPATION IN IPCC
SUch headlines could also carry such names as
Shoemaker, Handler, Gardner, etc……. good idea?
long live Crash Fullers!
Hi, Yo,……. Say…… DANNY BLOOM with a IMPORTANT word maven message for you……..
As you might know, the New York Times recently ran an excellent article on ambiguous newspaper headlines, called crash blossoms, coined by me, reported
by Ben Zimmer in his Jan. 31 ON LANGUAGE column, with the ghost of William Safire looking down from Heaven, British Left Waffles on Falklands
“For years, there was no good name for these double-take headlines”, wrote Ben Zimmer in the Times snailpaper edition and online, too.
Last August of 2009, however, one emerged in the TestyCopyEditors.com online discussion forum. Mike O’Connell, an American editor based in Sapporo, Japan, spotted the headline “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms” and wondered, “What’s a crash blossom?”
… Another participant in the forum, Dan Bloom in Taiwan, suggested that “crash blossoms” could be used as a label for such infelicitous headlines that encourage alternate readings, and news of the neologism quickly spread.
I am now sendiing out this SOS — SAVE OUR SNAILPAPERS! — in the hopes of finding a sympathetic newspaper columnist or reporter or editorial page editor even (!) — an oped columnist would be cool, too 00 and I am hoping YOU can direct me to that person, if it is not YOU! Can you? I hope this reporter/columnist can do a cute, humorous, serious story about this new
coinage I concocted out of snailmail’s earlier appearance and my love of real paper newspapers, which I call SNAILPAPERS as a TERM OF ENDEARMENT, not derision.
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2010/02/confessions-of-old-fuddieduddy-ofd-his.html
A word maven in the UK just wrote me and said “”Danny, …. It’s a neat neologism that promises to have a
future!”
And a novelist from Canada now living in Scotland told me this afternoon: “Danny, your idea of calling newspapers as snailpapers and the piece you wrote was beautiful and charming! You actually made me want to go get a newspaper – which is saying something. And the clipping idea had never occurred to me, despite the fact that I’m constantly doing that with electronic information. Thanks for sharing it with me
….”
So I was there when “crash blossoms” bloomed, so to speak, and now I am pushing SNAILPAPERS up the hill, and I feel snailpapers as a term of endearment for paper newspapers is even MORE IMPORTANT that the silly ”crash blossoms” meme. Can you help me bring this word to the attention of newspaper editors worldwide, via your friends in the business? If you cannot write a story about this, can you refer me to a friend who might be interested. One good print story about SNAILPAPERS will get the word out. Jim Romenesko will pay attention. Bill Keller
will take notice. Alex Beam in Boston will smile.
Paul Gillin at Newspaper Death Watch gave this neologism a boost on his blog last week. Google it.
And A. Barton Hinkle at the Richmond Times Dispatch gave a further boost this week on his blog there, too. Google it too.
So here’s my SOS — can you help me get the word out about SNAILPAPERS as a term of endearment for print newspapers? If so, give me an email holler. I am in Taiwan, marooned here for the rest of my life, and loving every moment, too. But even though I am far away overseas on an invisible island in the western Pacific, I am still a part of this world, too, and I got a few good ideas left in me, too. Holler me. SOS!
Cheers,
Danny Bloom
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2010/02/confessions-of-old-fuddieduddy-ofd-his.html
I see by the snailpapers in Britain that a major literary agent has signed up a top journo there to write an “on language” type of book about CRASH BLOSSOMS in the English-language media the world over, for publication in 2012 — and advance of US$25,000 is being reported, the writer keeping low profile, book capitalizing on Ben Zimmer’s recent New York Times “On Language” article about said “crash blossoms” and how they, er, blossomed….. THE BOOK SHOULD BE A WINNER! BRAVO!
I see by the snailpapers in Britain that a major literary agent has signed up a top journo there to write an “on language” type of book about CRASH BLOSSOMS in the English-language media the world over, for publication in 2012 — and advance of US$25,000 is being reported, the writer keeping low profile, book capitalizing on Ben Zimmer’s recent New York Times “On Language” article about said “crash blossoms” and how they, er, bloomed, er, blossomed ….. THE BOOK SHOULD BE A WINNER! BRAVO!
No, the book won’t be Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim, and Other Flubs from the Nation’s Press published by Columbia Journal in 1980, before the term “crash blossoms” bloomed, and no, it won’t be titled Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge a 1987 tome by Gloria Cooper. The title of the Crash Blossoms book is still tentative but for sure CRASH BLOSSOMS will appear in the title. Any suggestions for what to call this book? I will forward them on to the literary agent, the editor and the author.
The book also will not be titled Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language which Richard Lederer did in 1987.
Hello Adamsmithblogging in 1922, dan bloom contacting in 2032. SMILE:
No, Times online got it right, and I did not coin the word, since i did not make this term up out of thin air or even give an old term a new boost, i simply read the headline posted by Nessie3 on the Testy blog, and he asked “what is a crash blossom?” and that made me think, from a word maven’s POV, that a crash blossom just might a cute word for the hedline he had just threaded, and it took from there. But i was joking, joshing, off the cuff kidding, not really serious in terms of serious, it was just a chat room and i never thought anyone outside Testy would ever take the term seriously, but like John Lennon said life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, the term took off and six months later the Times writes about it. Intersting how things work. But all coinage credit, IMHO, should go to Mike O’Connell because he found the headline, he threaded it, posted it on the chat room, so the term really belongs to him. I just did some lowkey PR work on the side, and for my work at Testy on this term, I was banned for life by webmeister Phil Blanchard, reasons for which he never explained publicly, as he should, not privately to him. Weird. I get him a nice mention in NYTimes, he thanks me by banning me for life from his website, of which I was a memeber for 10 years. He’s weird that way. Sigh.
i am the guy who coined the term crash blossoms in Taiwan, ask me how and why i did it….dan bloom
Dan
Please explain, thanks for the comment
BTW is the reason different from that at Times Online