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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Betteridge's law of headlines | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:07:20.500979+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Question headlines == Phrasing headlines as questions is a tactic employed by newspapers that do not "have the facts required to buttress the nut graph". Roger Simon characterized the practice as justifying "virtually anything, no matter how unlikely", giving "Hillary to Replace Biden on Ticket?" and "Romney to Endorse Gay Marriage Between Corporations?" as hypothetical examples of such a practice. Many question headlines were used, for example, in reporting of Bharatiya Janata Party in-fighting in 2004, because no politicians went on record to confirm or deny facts, such as "Is Venkaiah Naidu on his way out?" Because this implication is known to readers, guides giving advice to newspaper editors state that so-called "question heads" should be used sparingly. Freelance writer R. Thomas Berner calls them "gimmickry". Grant Milnor Hyde observed that they give the impression of uncertainty in a newspaper's content. When Linton Andrews worked at the Daily Mail after the First World War, one of the rules set by Lord Northcliffe was to avoid question headlines, unless the question itself reflected a national issue. Question headlines are not legally sound when it comes to avoiding defamation. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma held in 1913, in its decision in Spencer v. Minnick, that "A man cannot libel another by the publication of language the meaning and damaging effect of which is clear to all men, and where the identity of the person meant cannot be doubted, and then escape liability through the use of a question mark." The use of question headlines as a form of sensationalism has a long history, including the 9 June 1883, headline in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, "Was It Peppermint Mary?" The story, about a jewellery store that had tried to prevent its female employees from flirting with people outside the store, only mentioned "Peppermint" Mary at the end of the piece as an employee who might possibly have caused this and did not answer the question. The New York World also famously used a question headline for hedging when editors were unsure of their facts, when it reported the outcome of the 1916 United States presidential election. When other New York City newspapers ran statement headlines on 8 November 1916 saying "Hughes Is Elected" (The Evening Sun, final edition the night before), "Hughes Is Elected by Narrow Margin" (The Sun), "Hughes Is Elected by Majority of 40" (The New York Herald), "Hughes the Next President" (The Journal of Commerce), "Hughes Sweeps State" (New York Tribune) and "Nation Swept by Hughes!" (New York American), the World ran one with a question headline, "Hughes Elected in Close Contest?" This was the result of a last-minute intervention by then World journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, who, having received a tip from gambling friends that Charles Evans Hughes might not in fact win, persuaded Charles M. Lincoln, the managing editor of the paper, to reset the headline in between editions, inserting a question mark. Confusingly, below the question headline the World still had a picture of Hughes captioned "The President-Elect" but the question headline did indeed turn out to have the answer "no", as President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected, which the World finally announced in a headline two days later. Advertisers and marketers prefer yes/no question headlines that are answered "yes", as a reader that immediately answers "no" to a question headline on an advertisement is likely to skip over the advertisement entirely. The most famous example of such a question headline in advertising is "Do you make these mistakes in English?", written to advertise Sherwin Cody's English-language course and used from 1919 to 1959, which (with readers answering "yes" they did make the mistakes that the advertisement proceeded to outline) was measured as more successful than non-yes/no-question alternatives. Victor Schwab, a partner in the advertising agency that worked for Cody, published an analysis of the aspects of the headline attempting to look at it scientifically and using ten years' worth of revenue and customer enquiry data for both it and a statement headline that Cody had also used. He noted amongst other things that working in its favour was the question addressing the reader using the second person. A 2013 study into computer-mediated communication came to a similar conclusion, finding that question headlines posted to Twitter and eBay increased click-through rates in comparison to statement headlines and that questions that address or reference the reader have statistically significant higher click-through rates than rhetorical or general questions. The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions. For example, "What Should We Expect From Evolving Import-Export Policy?" is an open-ended question, whereas "Should We Expect an Embargo on Widgets?" is of closed form.
== Hinchliffe's rule == In the field of particle physics, the concept is known as Hinchliffe's rule, after physicist Ian Hinchliffe, who stated that if a research paper's title is in the form of a yes–no question, the answer to that question will be "no". The adage led into a humorous attempt at a liar paradox by a 1988 paper, written by physicist Boris Kayser under the pseudonym "Boris Peon", which bore the title: "Is Hinchliffe's Rule True?".
== See also == Clickbait – Web content intended to entice users to click on a link Headlinese – Strange phrasing of headlines List of eponymous laws – Adages and sayings named after a person Loaded question – Question containing an unjustified assumption
== References ==
=== Sources ===
== Further reading == Gooden, Philip (2015). "Arts". Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Information. ISBN 9781472915023. "The Press: Question Mark Magazines". Time. Vol. 69, no. 5. 4 February 1957. Locricchio v. Evening News Association, 438 Mich. 84 (26 August 1991) ("Nor is it determinative here that the sting of the headline concludes with a question mark — 'Is it Mafia?'").
== External links ==
Betteridge's website Ian Betteridge at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-01-10)