Bad Dream Leads Florida Man to Allegedly Beat His Girlfriend

http://news.kron4.com/news/bad-dream-leads-florida-man-to-allegedly-beat-his-gir...

Can A be said to lead to B if B may not have happened?

If the dream actually happened then why not (although I think you meant A for your last B up there).

But the dream was not alleged, the beating was.

And the dream caused the beating, though the beating may not have happened.

I'm actually in a minor squibble (yes, that's not a word) with the headline writer on this...

"Man allegedly beats gf after bad dream" might be proper, but it doesn't lead with the juice on the story.

"Bad Dream leads to allegations that man beat gf" implies a more direct relationship than may be warranted (and sort of implies that the gf dreamed the beating, and then alleged that the dream was real.)

"Man alleged to have beaten wife after bad dream."

Notice that I did not say who had the bad dream. A headline should intrigue.

Here's hoping the girl friend is now former girlfriend.

I suppose it's possible that someone in their legal department told the sub-editor that you can say what you like about dreams, as they aren't evidence in law anyway, so that they could save themselves an "allegedly". But I think they will have written it like that just to make sure that they could keep the split infinitive.

>3 Jesse_wiedinmyer:
"But the dream was not alleged, the beating was."
The article is not much clearer than the headline, but I suspect they both are alleged. That is, the information about the act and the motive both come from the girlfriend.

I'm still not happy with the style, but I think I might have written, "Bad dream leads Florida man to beat girlfriend, she alleges."

And if the reporter doesn't even know that much and got the information from the police without any explanation of how they know what they know, "Bad dream leads Florida man to beat girlfriend, say police."

I'm guessing that the writer was using a strict sense of "allegations were made" for allegedly.

The events are alleged to have happened. Or, the girlfriend alleged that Carlos Gascon did these things, but the allegations have not been confirmed.

Reporters don't write the heads.

Headline writers are the grandaddies of clickbait writers.

How the mighty have fallen.

No, the headline writer and I went over this for quite some time. He was rather adamant that it was as good as it could be.

Eventually he just said at 5:00 am, I just aim for interesting, short and correct. And pretty much in that order.

>13 Jesse_wiedinmyer:
Are you sure it wasn't "Interesting, short, and not actionable"?

"If it bleeds, it leads."

"How the mighty have fallen."

I'm sure you meant, "How the mighty are alleged to have fallen."

We have a headline in UK this week where a man "shot his dead wife". (Allegedly)

!7> Well, he could have shot her and just wounded her.

>17 Novak:
Or he was just making sure.

Maybe his defense was that he knew she was dead, so it wasn't really murder.

He was mad because she dropped dead instead of making his supper, so he shot her?

Your honor, she was already dead when I killed her...

I had a friend who once used a similar line with me. I'd caught him out in a lie he had told me. He explained that he hadn't actually lied, he just hadn't told me the truth. And really, the only reason he hadn't told me the truth was because he hadn't wanted to hurt my feelings. And anyways, there was no way he could have known that what he was doing would hurt my feelings. And besides, I couldn't be angry with him for lying because I had lied to him first.

I normally like to condense that to a simple "I didn't lie to you, and besides you lied to me first."

>22 Jesse_wiedinmyer: So.. .. That's when you shot him? Sounds fair to me.

>22 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I had a friend (ok, an ex-boyfriend) who acted as his own lawyer while on trial for murdering his wife. His defense could be best described as "I didn't do it, nobody saw me, and you can't prove anything." (He fired his lawyer because the lawyer didn't think that line of defense was the best way to go--go figure.) He's doing 35 years.

(Yes, there's a lot of story to go with that story. Not today.)

#24> "I had an ex-boyfriend who acted as his own lawyer while on trial for murdering his wife."

I hope this isn't too insensitive, but that is a great first line for a noir crime novel.

PHAEDRAB'S EX IS INNOCENT !!

"I had an ex-boyfriend who acted as his own lawyer while on trial for murdering his wife."

I think you may have actually rendered me somewhat speechless.

>25 rocketjk: No, not insensitive, actually pretty clever. Maybe for the next NaNoWriMo.

>26 Novak: I fear no one but him or his deceased wife know the truth of that. I know I'm innocent, but I'm also sure there are some people who would still dispute that fact.

>27 Jesse_wiedinmyer: In the right mood, I can regale people with the story of spending a few years trapped inside an episode of Law & Order.