A poorly worded headline in a national tabloid newspaper caused concern and consternation among the relatives and friends of British actor and national institution John Hurt.
The headline was splashed across the billboards of the newspaper sellers, but on reading the article it became clear that there had been a terrible faux pas on behalf of the newspaper who had worded their headline badly.
The article itself had nothing to do with the Indiana Jones actor John Hurt, but instead was about a client of a prostitute in Basingstoke who had been caught up in a gas explosion, caught in flagrante when a gas cylinder in the warehouse next to the alley in which he was paying for services exploded, injuring him and the prostitute he was with.
Tom Artow of the Punctuation and Capitalisation society said the headline was an example of the deterioration of ability of newspaper editors to use English correctly.
"We're seeing more and more of this kind of poor grammar," said Artow. "It's not just wrong, it's confusing and downright poor. We are sending the newspaper editor in question a copy of the book Eats Shoots and Leaves in an attempt to educate him in the correct use of punctuation and capitalisation. Mr Hurt had been filming an episode of Braniac Science Abuse for Sky One, and relatives were concerned, as this programme quite often blows up things."
