What is your headline of the year 2018?
Every year the Verein Deutsche Sprache selects the headlines of the year. The headlines are measured by how they summarize the essence of a contribution in a few words, and how they creatively use the wordplay wealth that the German language possesses. Winner 2018 is the title of the Bildzeitung to the result of the Bavarian state election on 14 October:
“Green is the new red.” This is explained later in the article: “What used to be the People’s Party SPD, today is the former green niche party.” How do you make your statements, statements or headlines striking? Can you identify the building principles in the following examples of other 2018 selected headlines? The “tight” Second Winner 2018 was the Spiegel heading “Liba with Fibl”, a report on the superiority of classical spelling lessons in learning to write. Third place will be followed by four headlines:
“Hole and holes” (the daily mirror on the financial crisis at the BER airport)
“Boy, never come back” (so the Süddeutsche Zeitung to a possible return of Silvio Berlusconi in politics)
“Roaring silence” (headline of Börsen-Zeitung on internal communication at Deutsche Bank after the disclosure that its supervisory board is looking for a new CEO)
“The desert son” (Thus, the Hannoversche Allgemeine wrote a major report on the machinations of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is accused of, among other things, a contract killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.)
And finally there are more interesting examples among the first 30 places:
In the empty room (on the topic: Germany needs a lot more educators, Die Zeit)
The Taming of the Shrew (on the topic: Theresa May and the Brexit Negotiations with the EU, Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Count Draghila (on the subject: Mario Draghi sucks the savers off, title page Cicero 10/2018.)
Uber-rated (on the topic: article on the grotesque valuation of the stock market candidate Uber on the capital market, Süddeutsche Zeitung)
More Schanzengleichheit (on the subject: The ski jumpers dream of long flights, Frankfurter Allgemeine)
Good headlines and statements can be built. If you are interested in the topic and other tips, write an e-mail to our expert Georg von Stein.
