Headline too hot to handle

I often tell students that good headline writers have dirty minds. Headlines often have double meanings that their authors did not intend. The headline at right, which ran recently in Greeley's Tribune, proves my point.

"UNC prof works to get boys hot about reading," might have seemed innocuous enough to the person writing it, but readers unfamiliar with the story under the headline could easily infer a double meaning.

This point is particularly poignant in light of recent news from the University of Northern Colorado, where a theater professor was arrested and charged with unlawful sexual contact with a child and sexual exploitation of children after he was accused of videotaping young men urinating in his house. The professor is on indefinite paid suspension and is banned from campus. I have no comment on the professor's case.

One way to avoid double meanings in headlines is to make sure several editors read them before they are published.