Really?

Anyone have a copy or two of Lynne Truss's EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES they can spare for the journalism world? These two headlines were taken from today's news:

Police: 14-Year-Old Hospitalized, Struck By Car (The Hartford Courant)
Don't worry--as it turns out, he was struck by the car before he was hospitalized, not after. Because being struck by a car in the hospital would be awkward and disturbing.


photo credit: SOAPnet (from a General Hospital episode, apparently...who knew?)


First a spat, then boy, 3, goes missing (CNN)
Again, rest assured. Only the three-year-old went missing (after a fight with his mom), not the boy and a spat. Phew! For a second there, I thought we had some sort of bizarre serial kidnapper on our hands!





Now it's really the word order and choice, not the punctuation, that's screwing up those headlines. But still. Lynne Truss's clever book would probably be of some kind of assistance...