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Site picks
- Once we hated business jargon… Back in the day, Plain Text railed against corporatese like everyone else…
- …but now we've changed our minds. It’s quite useful really, in its proper place. Why resist?
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- Gizmodo Flip, punchy copy that makes gadget freaks salivate.
- Tim Harford Not scared of full stops.
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The sublime art of the daft headline
Tech webzine The Register has really surpassed itself this time, with this line to kick off a piece about a German innovation which makes bicycle helmets smell when they need replacing after an impact:
Connoisseurs may take issue with the repetition of ‘crack/cracked’ but I reckon it’s sheer headline genius. Just as good if not better than famous tabloid newsletter efforts such as The Sun’s “Obama Lama ding-dong”, fronting an article which implied a geopolitical rift over the US president’s meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader. Although that was surely a headline that had been sitting in a drawer somewhere just waiting for the flimsiest pretext to be used.