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I think the five people were killed in the aircraft from this news. The headline is:

Melbourne plane crash: Five killed as aircraft hits shopping centre

Why use active voice rather than passive voice in this news headline?

Is the auxiliary verb dropped in this sentence? Is the full sentence "Five have been killed as aircraft his shopping centre"?

Mari-Lou A
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Cody
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    If you're referring to "five killed" (yellow highlighting), it's already in the passive voice. – Lawrence Feb 21 '17 at 04:41
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    Active would be "crash kills five". – Davo Feb 21 '17 at 04:47
  • Is the auxiliary verb dropped in this sentence? The full sentence: Five have been killed as aircraft his shopping centre. – Cody Feb 21 '17 at 04:50
  • I have no idea why passive voice is not in the form of "[be] + [past participle of verb] " – Cody Feb 21 '17 at 04:53
  • @Lawrence What's the tense of "Five killed"? I think it's simple past tense. Am I right? – Cody Feb 21 '17 at 04:57
  • Because it is "headlinese". Editors have their own criteria that do not include grammar. – Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_ Feb 21 '17 at 04:58
  • @Cascabel Is it kind of reduction? – Cody Feb 21 '17 at 04:58
  • Yup. Look here. Editors commonly remove articles, conjunctions and the verb "be" in passive use. – Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_ Feb 21 '17 at 05:01
  • @Cody Yes, it's a shortened form of five were killed. Reading "five killed" as active makes the five out to be the killers. – Lawrence Feb 21 '17 at 05:02
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    Thank you for sharing these to me. I also found an article about this. – Cody Feb 21 '17 at 05:04
  • Actually I think the implied full sentence is "Five [are] killed as aircraft hits shopping centre." Cascabel correctly to identifies the wording as an instance of"headlinese." The main text of the story is expressed in past tense—as is fitting for a description of events that are now in the past. But the headline adopts present tense, presumably to give the reader a sense of immediacy about the event. You might read a story with the headline "Mars Attacked Earth Yesterday Afternoon"; but newspapers share a belief that you are even likelier to read one with the headline "Mars Attacks!" – Sven Yargs Feb 21 '17 at 07:26
  • related: Why do newspaper headlines use strange syntax rules? – Mari-Lou A Feb 21 '17 at 08:52
  • Related: Why is the present perfect used in headlines? – Mari-Lou A Feb 21 '17 at 10:06
  • See also http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/104968/headline-language/104970#104970 http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/131967/english-dialect-used-in-titles http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/104968/headline-language – Arm the good guys in America Feb 21 '17 at 14:16
  • Our local newspaper, The Roanoke Times, one Christmas morning headlined an automobile accident that had occurred in Wise County the previous day: THREE WISE MEN KILLED IN ACCIDENT. There are less controversial ways to grab readers' attention, and one of them is to use the historical present tense, in which you use the present tense to narrate past events. The effect is to bring immediacy to a past event; it is a common literary device, not restricted to newspapers. – Airymouse Feb 21 '17 at 14:38

1 Answers1

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Newspaper headlines are often written in a special style, which is very different from ordinary English. In this style there are special rules of grammar and words are often used in unusual ways.

"Five killed as aircraft hits shopping centre" means Five (people) (have been) killed as an aircraft has hit a shopping centre.

From Michael Swan's Practical English Usage: enter image description here

enter image description here

mahmud k pukayoor
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    Please do not post screenshots. They can't be copied and pasted, they aren't indexed by search engines, and they don't adhere to browser text resizing among other problems. Transcriptions are far preferable, especially because you need to include them for the image alt text in the first place. – choster Feb 21 '17 at 06:27
  • After some deliberation, I've upvoted this answer because Swan does a pretty magnificent job of summarising and explaining how headlinese is used in newspapers. – Mari-Lou A Feb 21 '17 at 10:02
  • BUT choster is absolutely correct when he says screenshots are not searchable, by posting an image instead of transcribing the most relevant sections, this post will not be shown if visitors or users type in the search box: *Newspaper, title, passive tense, ellipsis. present perfect* – Mari-Lou A Feb 21 '17 at 10:02
  • Just were killed or are killed. – tchrist Feb 21 '17 at 10:06
  • @tchrist *five have been killed* is perfectly fine, it is grammatical, but I find which follows; ... as an aircraft has hit a shopping centre more worrisome. – Mari-Lou A Feb 21 '17 at 10:08