Ha ha very funny. Except this is grammatically correct and not ambiguous. It would work with your joke interpretation if it said "who shot dead, unarmed, black man"

[–] Landrin201@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I disagree that this is unambiguous, I was also confused reading this headline. It's odd wording. It may be technically correct but that doesn't mean it's unambiguous.

[–] FiniteLooper@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

“…shot and killed an unarmed…” would be a much better phrasing

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or "shot dead an unarmed black man". Three additional characters would have fixed this. I've long been frustrated by the journalistic style of removing every possible word from headlines. We're no longer reading these things printed on dead trees, there's no extra ink being spent or space wasted.

[–] Polar@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

Many apps or websites cut titles off, though. It's important to keep them short.

I wish more people followed proper journalistic formats. Frustrates me when the first sentence is supposed to have everything you need to know - who, what, where, when, why, how - but instead these gen Z journalists think they should bury the details 5 paragraphs deep.

The proper way to write an article is to give the reader everything they need to know from the first sentence, and then expand in detail with each following paragraph, from most important to least.

[–] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

I'd probably go with

London Cop Charged With Murder For Shooting Unarmed Black Man Dead

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 6 points 2 years ago

"who shot an unarmed black man dead"

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Quick tip - if the majority of people who read something find it ambiguous, it is. Plain and simple - especially for languages like English that don't have a central authority for setting language rules.

[–] Lazylazycat@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

It's written by a British person in OG English. This phrase isn't unambiguous here and it took me a sec to figure out why people were confused. It's just a syntax difference but surely you can figure it out with context clues, just like I did with your interpretation.

[–] Mr_Blott@feddit.uk 3 points 2 years ago

Quick tip - People with a poor grasp of un-simplified English are not the majority

[–] Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Dammit...thats what i said in another post!