Government Unprepared Themselves

Abbreviated headlines can imply a different meanings than the articles themselves describe. We've all seen it. Jay Leno even makes a feature of it on "The Tonight Show."

"Report says government unprepared for Katrina"

While I knew what this headline meant before reading the article, I saw the double meaning right away. The article immediately expands the headline to read, "The U.S. government was unprepared to react to the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina..." However, reread the headline as written.

Was the government actually prepared for Katrina? As written, the government performed the action of unpreparing. Therefore, they must have been prepared first if they later undid it. Adding the verb, "was," changes "unprepared" from a verb to an adjective.

Headline Editors seem to lack full knowledge of sentence structure (subject-verb). Instead, they prefer to write provacative headlines that may or may not coincide with the article by omitting a key word or two.

Maybe this is a bit of a stretch. Does "unprepare" even exist as a word? Dictionary.com doesn't think so.