• astraeus
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    10 months ago

    Chick-Fil-A owner =/= Chick-Fil-A franchise owner

    • current@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      It’s newspaper headline dialect. Normally it’d be “A Chick-fil-A owner” or “The Chick-fil-A owner” depending on which one it is, but news headlines often omit the article (in this case “a”).

      It originated partially as a way to save money, letters were expensive, and partially to keep people’s attention by not taking too long to read; but now it’s mostly just historical and used because many headlines don’t “sound right” without it.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/comments/ofxnbn/

      https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/pzdleo/

      ^ Reddit threads of people talking about the phenomenon

      It may be confusing for those not accustomed to such things, especially ESL learners.

      • astraeus
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        10 months ago

        No, here specificity is important and wouldn’t have required a grammatical article, but rather a proper qualifier. The difference between a high-profile person and a lower-profile person. This article title was written in a misleading way for click farming.