This week, an ad in The New York Times caused quite a stir. Here's the MoveOn web site where there are links to documents backing the group's argument as well as a pdf version of the full ad. Poynter's Roy Peter Clark writes off of the controversy, taking it as a way into discussion of why your "darling" headlines maybe ought not to run. Here's a take-out from his article:
I think what we have here is more than a failure to communicate. It's a seduction by creativity, an insincerity mated to hyperbole to meet the demands of a snarky and polarized political culture. The headline writer should have followed the advice, almost a century old now, of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who lectured his Cambridge students that "style ... can never be ... extraneous ornament ... Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."
