Mark it: Mirror doesn’t say/report/write anything; it exclaims(!)

Keeping on with Mumbai Mirror, here’s another example why the ‘tabs’ are seen as irritatingly stupid. Take their Feb 25 lead story, for instance. Sample their strap/sub-head/intro/what-have-you (copy-pasted here): “Four assailants hammer three nails, each of them 2.5 inches long, into an HSC student’s head in Ambarnath; cops clueless on who did it”

A great story, no doubt, for any paper — enough tragedy/pathos/human interest/what-have-you — let alone a city tab. But what does the headline say? “NAILED!” goes without saying, the size is HUGE, and the as-good-as-obligatory exclamation mark in red, though the rest of it (the whole word of six full alphabets) was in red. What’s the point? I am not worried about the red in the exclaim-mark — that could be the work of an over-enthusiastic but under-educated designer, and can be easily pardoned, though not the journalist who saw and okayed it — but weren’t we taught to be sensitive in such cases back in kindergarten? What’s so funny about a guy being robbed and then three nails being hammered in his head? It’s freaking outrageous. But when will we learn to put that rage, that anger, that fury on print without demeaning/mocking it by taking recourse to the mandatory exclamation mark?