Dear Readers:
Long names fascinate the short-named Dr. Ink.
On Saturday, Aug. 2, the Doc opened his favorite newspaper, the St. Pete Times, and found this headline atop the front page: “Clogs gum up desal plant filters.”
That’s quite a headline, to be sure. If you count the spaces as letters, the number would be 32.
The excellent story was written by Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler. Now when the Doc first read this byline, he thought that he was reading a double byline, that the piece was written by the duo Shannon Colavecchio and Van Sickler.
No. The former Shannon Colavecchio has added a name, presumably by marriage. The marital appendage (nom de mariage?) now gives us a byline that, if you count the spaces, adds up to 34. She’s about three characters short of a jump.
So, in this case, the headline count (even with six words) is shorter than the byline count.
This is impressive, and, Doc muses, possibly a world record. Or maybe not.
Dr. Ink invites his readers to make us all aware of long bylines. Count all the spaces and all the hyphens. The definition of a long byline is any name that is longer than the alphabet.
The shortest byline? Probably the uni-named children’s author Avi.
