Mea Culpa: Experts in the history of headlines

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

America first: it’s pointless to call Trump’s slogan ‘famous’ (Reuters)

“Expert” is one of those words that should be avoided in headlines. It doesn’t tell the reader anything, except that our report is based on the views of someone who knows what they are talking about. That ought to be taken for granted.

So when the reader comes across a headline such as “Brexit will ultimately destabilise Europe, experts fear”, the first question is: who are these so-called experts? In this case, the question was answered immediately, because the sub-headline was: “Historians warn general election debate displays ‘extremely disturbing’ ignorance of the wider effects of Britain’s departure from the EU.”

In that case, why not put “historians” in the main headline? That was in fact what we did on the story itself, and we called them “experts” in the sub-headline to avoid repetition, which was the sensible way round – but when it was trailed on the front page of the website, we swapped “historians” and “experts”, for no obvious reason.