Hacker News Reader

Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

Does the title have a typo and it should be as instead of has or is this correct?

The headline is correct as written. There is an abbreviated grammar common in English newspaper headlines (at least in UK and seemingly Australia). "($thing_x occurs) as ($thing_y occurs)" means "$thing_x occurs, because of or related to $thing_y occurring".

So you might also see a headline like "Dortmund's title hopes fade as Lewandowski scores hat-trick" => "Dortmund's chances of winning the Bundesliga became narrower, after Bayern won and Robert Lewandowski scored three goals (possibly against Dortmund)"

It's something native speakers often don't realise, but there's a lot of really specific stuff for healdines

X as Y is perfectly fine, but the article headline still and the HN title previously read X has Y. That is what I was wondering about, whether this is some strange headline shortcut.

OH sorry! I must have I read your comment exactly backwards because the headline had already been corrected :D

That's just the regional accent.

Either one is correct. Meaning is subtly different, but not much.

"has" is not correct it should be "as".

A later sentence in the article is formed similarly and correctly uses "as" - "The runway also 'melted' at the RAF Brize Norton, military air base in Oxfordshire, west of London, on Monday as the UK struggled to cope with the weather."

But the airport can have temperatures. With some additional punctuation, has could be read more clearly.

Let's say "Runway melts" is X and Y is "temperatures in the UK near 40". "X as Y" says that these two things are happening at the same time. That makes sense. "X has Y" is incoherent.

I think this matters because some people on hackernews are not native English users. They may be legitimately confused or misled by typos that a native speaker would unconsciously correct.

As in, "melted runway at London Luton airport has gained sentience, named itself The Global Warming, and is holding the rest of the UK as hostage with its super-area-heating power; negotiations are ongoing"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com