ROUND #8

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. 
—David Ogilvy

Indeed, headlines are arguably more important than the article itself… They need to be tricky, unique, creative, super-clickable, irresistible and even sexy:)  …. so as to grab people’s attention in just a few seconds. BUT, also for that reason, headlines are often rather difficult to understand for non-native speakers of English.

So, why not expand your vocabulary by scanning the headlines DAY by DAY?

Below you will find recent headlines taken from various newspapers, with terms and expressions well worth learning. Guess the meaning of the expressions marked in red and check your answers in the VocabList below. Enjoy!

CU tomorrow for the next round of headlines!

UK’s prisoner voting ban likely to be ruled illegal by EU court

Portugal’s stalemate threatens to derail eurozone’s model pupil

Church can’t be ‘museum of memories’, pope tells synod

VocabList

ban = an order that prohibits something (also used as a verb: to ban) HERE: In UK prisons prisoners are not allowed to vote

stalemate = a situation in which none of the parties can win, and no action is taken

to derail = to prevent sg from succeeding (a train may also derail, e.g come off the railway tracks)

model pupil = the best pupil in class (HERE: a good example to be followed among eurozone countries)

hoax = a plan to deceive someone / play a trick on someone (a hoax call, for example, saying that there is a bomb somewhere)

synod = regular meeting of Church members (the word comes from the Greek synodos meaning ‘meeting’)

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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