“Prosecutors Hope Verdict Will Be a Deterrent to Others,” says the headline about Raj Rajaratnam’s conviction in this morning’s print edition of The New York Times.
What grabbed me about the headline is how easily I could shorten it.
I know what I’d do, but what about you? Please post your answer below.
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Fun idea, Susan!
“Verdict deterrent to others, prosecutors hope.”
or
“Verdict a deterrent, prosecutors hope”
TWO options–this is great.
I see this all the time in editing: when you have a word that is both a noun and a verb, go with the verb.
So, “deter” rather than “as a deterrent”…
Allan Lewis took the words out of my mouth in his reply on the Investment Writing Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/InvestmentWriting#!/InvestmentWriting/posts/220780014600795
Here’s the point I want to make. There are opportunities to make sentences more powerful by replacing the “be” verbs.
Tom’s reminder to choose a verb rather than a noun–this is especially true for “tion” words–was a good fix. Headline writers, however, have to consider space and layout as much as meaning.