Headline

[haseli22]

Dear friends,

As you know in newspaper headlines to express the future infintive form is used, but today I saw the following headline:

"Mourinho will return to England"

Why in this headline instead of "to return" "will return" has been used?

And would you please let me know of any websites that discusses headline structure fully? I google the topic and found some incomplete sources.
Thanks.

 

[Academic Writing]

I usually see the infinitive as you mentioned. I think the use of "will" in that heading is to emphasize the certainty of his return.

I haven't followed that story, but I'm guessing that over the previous few days or weeks, there has been debate over whether he would return. So the current headline uses "will" to show that he definitely will return, despite whatever reservations he had.

For headline writing, you could try searching around online. I quickly checked the Associated Press Stylebook, but didn't see too much about headlines (the guide has just a small bit of info about capitalization and punctuation). So I'd look elsewhere.

 

[riquecohen]

Headlines are designed to fit the space available for them. Will occupies slightly more space than to.

 

[Tdol]

Headlines are designed to fit the space available for them. Will occupies slightly more space than to.

This page presumably required a bit more to fill it. :up:

To the OP, headlines, like much of language use, do not follow rigid absolute rules- there is plenty of flexibility and Riquecohen has raised an important issue- spacing.