ABSTRACT
Straumann's book contains many clever remarks on block-language and language in general, but his careful analysis of headlines from purely formal points of view without regard to ordinary grammatical categories is not really of the slightest assistance in understanding either ordinary sentences or his special subject. We understand a headline more or less through our transposing it into ordinary language with its usual grammar. Straumann himself seems to admit this when on p. 79 he applies the terms nexus and junction to headlines like "Steamer sunk" (nexus) and "Sunk Steamer" (junction) or "Captain Russell" (junction) and "Russell Captain" (nexus). Headlinese combinations are not in themselves sentences and often cannot be directly supplemented so as to form articulate sentences: they move, as it were, on the fringe of ordinary grammar.
