[HPforGrownups] Re: Fudge

[Kathryn Cawte]

No: HPFGUIDX 98965


> >Potioncat:
> >In American English a headline that read "Fudge Ran Out of Town"
> >would mean that the townspeople ran him out, or more likely here, he
> >was forced out of office.
> >Potioncat
>
Dave
> Not to quibble (OK, yes, it is, but....) but if he were forced out of
> office and the Ministry (and town) wouldn't the headline be "Fudge Run Out
> of Town"?  Of course, "Fudge Ran Out of Town" could go either way (on a
> rail, or uder his own steam).
>

K

I snipped Dave's rather interesting description of the origin of the phrase.
By using Ran and not Run the headline means that Fudge is doing the running
not that someone is running him out of town. The correct English (Oh God I
feel like a stick in the mud here) is Fudge was run out of town, now I can
see a headline writer dropping the was (in fact its common to do so in
headlines) but why change the verb form?

Of course it does depend what sort of paper we're talking about - a tabloid
might well screw up the grammar totally making the headline ambiguous - but
as it stands it *means* that he did the running himself, *but* it's rather a
torturous way of saying that so what it *means* and what it was *meant* to
mean may be different.

In other words the writer in me would like to strangle the (fictional)
headline writer for mangling the English language either way :)

K