II. The Grammatical Features of English News Headlines

2.1 Tense

    The grammar in the English news headlines differs greatly with the regular English grammar, and some even seem irregular, which is exactly the notable feature of the English news headlines. The headlines are used to make a summary of the contents of the news reports or articles. Generally speaking, a good headline is characterized by attractiveness, conciseness and has a high degree of generality. The English news headlines should be brief in words and the meanings should be intelligible. In order to achieve the function, the past tense is seldom adopted in the English news headlines, let alone the past perfect tense. Instead, the English news headlines usually adopt the present tense in order to let the readers be personally on the scene. There are mainly several kinds of tenses in the English news headlines: the simple present tense, the future tense and the present continuous tense. The following is the introduction of these tenses.

Firstly, in terms of the simple present tense, the news report records the events that have happened. Generally speaking, according to the regular English grammar, the English news headlines should use the past tense, but it would be less attractive and give people a sense of old-fashion. Therefore, the English news headlines usually adopt the simple present tense to enhance the freshness, directness and reality of the news report(Zhang 24). For example, 

    (1) Former Bush Official Kills Son and Self 

    前布什政府官员杀死儿子后自杀

    (2) Development Bank Urges Russians to Invest More

开发银行督促俄罗斯人增加投资 

    The future tense of verbs is more replaced with the infinitive words. The infinitive in the English news headlines directly represents the actions in the future and appears fluently in the English news headlines. It is because that the sign of infinitive “to” is composed of two letters, which is shorter than the word “will”. For example, 

    (1)Thousands of volunteers recruited in Hangzhou to support meetings

数千名志愿者应征杭州支持会议

    (2)Shipbuilder plans to integrate civilian, military businesses

造船者计划结合民用和军事工业

    However, in some special occasions, 源Z自+751=文-论(文+网[www.751com.cn the structure “will+ v” also should be used to represent the incoming things. For example,

    Ministry: Military will safeguard state sovereignty and security

    军队将会保护国家主权和安全

    Then, besides the past things and the incoming events, there are events happening. In the English news headlines, those events that are happening are usually expressed by the structure “be+v-ing”. However, the word “be” is usually omitted, only keeping the present participle. That is to say, the single present participle can represent the actions and behaviors that are happening. For example,