That’s the headline after the markets opened this morning. What it really meant, of course, was that
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 149 points, or 1.9 percent, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-index rose 1.8 percent, a day after the major exchange dropped 5 percent or more for a second day.
Don’t junior high journalists learn not to anthroporphise the inanimate, especially what already starts out as a metaphor? Who owns the headline style guide at the Paper of Record, anyway?
The more nagging question, of course, is why such things drive me crazy.
The first sentence of an Austin A-S article in Metro&State struck me dumb this morning: “Three construction workers were critically injured in Giddings after witnesses reported hearing an explosion at a groundwater storage tank.” I couldn’t help it, but is that really the timeline? Heard explosion, guys injured. Or is it cause and effect as in ‘injured after something exploded” only, in this case, “injured after witnesses heard….” Things like this drive you crazy because you care about language. “JT’s sensibilities injured after reading newspaper.”
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