Tag truncated headlines

Truncated Headlines

• Specter Calls for Hearings on End-of-… – FOXNews
• Report: Obama Administration Missing … – FOXNews
• Mercury Marine union in Wis. rejects … – The Associated Press
• Poll: Harry Reid faces formidable foe… – The Associated Press
• Victims of Giant Wave Are Identified – New York Times
• States cut employee work days to save… – CNN
• Los Angeles has sharply cut water and… – Los Angeles Times
• The Real CIA News – Wall Street Journal
• Obama grabs fried shrimp, clams with … – The Associated Press
• CDC turns to social sites to get flu … – Reuters

Truncated Headlines

For those who don’t know, when Google News creates an entry for a
story in one of its RSS feeds, it picks an article from one of the
newspapers that reported the story, and generates a title for the RSS
entry by taking that paper’s headline, followed by its name.

But to prevent overflows or something, the headline is truncated to 36
characters, sometimes with amusing results. Here are a few I’ve
noticed recently:

• California Senate OKs plan to reduce … – Los Angeles Times
• US officials eye hanging chads — in … – Los Angeles Times
• Kennedy asks Massachusetts to change … – Los Angeles Times
• Prison plan clears Senate, but faces … – San Jose Mercury News
• Authorities in Midwest crack down on … – Chicago Tribune

I’m not picking on the LA Times. They just happened to be bitten by this behavior most often.