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!
This set of headlines is devoted to CHRISTMAS!
White Christmas Forecast: El Nino to Dash Hopes of SnowyHoliday for Two-Thirds of US
See the Christmas brainteaser that crashed the website of a British intelligence service
Michelle Obama Spills the Beans on President Obama’s Christmas Present
VocabList
to dash hopes = to ruin / to put en and to your hopes
brainteaser = puzzles, quizzes, riddles that make your brain ‘work’ in a funny way
to crash the website = to cause the website to stop working
to spill the beans (on/about something) = to tell people a secret
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