I have my cell phone set up so that if a news flash comes in
through the AP newsfeed, a text message displays on the screen. The “breaking
news” lines have all the restrictions that regular newspaper headlines
have, but even more length limits, so they’re prone to ambiguity.
Yesterday’s was a doozy; I waited to post because snarking at a sentence
glitch would have been horribly tacky if actual harm had befallen the subject of
the flash (who has, fortunately, been found and is safe):
“Police officers search for boy after not being found
in balloon.”
---- Bill Spruiell