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waiwai933

I hate to admit it, but my brain initially processed the headline as:

"Google execs have backed an asteroid mining venture. In other news, James Cameron has been unveiled."

Then, after that horrendous attempt at comprehension, it came up with this, which was only slightly better:

"James Cameron has unveiled an asteroid mining venture that is backed by Google execs."

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There was this nice piece by the NYT about the history and traditions of comma placement recently. Interesting read.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/fanfare-for-...

Replace "," with "and".

This is actually one thing I've always been wondering about as a non-native speaker when reading English headlines. Is there any reason newspapers prefer this style? It sounds weird to me.

It's weird for us native speakers too, don't worry.

My guess is that it puts the information in the title in order from the most eye-grabbing to the least. (The more readable "Google Execs and James Cameron unveil Asteroid Mining Venture" puts the holy shit part of the title at the end.)

It's very much an American newspaper thing--I've never seen it in the British press, but it seems to be house style at the New York Times and its ilk.

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