Untruncating
Facebook notifications often show an abbreviated version of some of the text that they’re about. In particular, notifications about shared links show an abbreviated version of the linked-to piece’s headline/title, with an ellipsis at the end.
Which sometimes makes me want to complete the truncated title. Which can have entertaining results.
I’ve been meaning for a while to post here about the un-truncating-titles game. But often, the article turns out to be about a very serious or upsetting issue, so I don’t want to make jokes about it.
But this morning I came across a headline that’s non-serious enough and open-ended enough to use as an example. The Facebook notification showed the article title like this:
New Zealand birds show humanlike…
So I invite you to complete that headline.
I also invite you to post other automatically truncated headlines, and your suggestions for untruncating them. But best to avoid headlines that were originally about traumatic or contentious situations.