Is the verb "is" missing in this sentence?

Question

I came across this headline:

"Bernard Arnault Once Again The World’s Richest Person After Jeff Bezos Loses Nearly $14 Billion In One Day"

I think there should be an "is" in this sentence like this:

"Bernard Arnault is Once Again The World’s Richest Person After Jeff Bezos Loses Nearly $14 Billion In One Day"

Which one is correct and why?

This is from a major media outlet.

Answer 1

News headlines have their own rules, and are usually abbreviated more than standard English grammar. This wikipedia article on "headlinese" has a list of the unique traits that are common in headline writing, including dropping articles and forms of "to be."

A standard prose sentence would need "is."

Answer 2

If it were a normal sentence then it would include the "is" (and wouldn't have nearly as many capital letters, and would have a full stop at the end). However, that's a headline.

In a physical newspaper, you have limited space and you also want to be able to have your headlines as large as possible to grab attention. This led to the development of "Headlinese".

Even though space isn't an issue on online platforms in the same way, the same style of writing headlines is still used to draw people into the articles.

There are quite a lot of characteristics of Headlinese. They're generally written in capital letters and have limited punctuation. For interest and some examples:

It tends to use

• abbreviations (hubby instead of husband)

• short words (jet instead of aeroplane, booze instead of alcohol). This also uses a noun (bust) rather than any verbs (e.g. caught in a sting)

• is nearly always written in the present tense (demands instead of have demanded)

• will stack words (love cheat football star rather than football star who cheated on his wife)

• As you've noticed, the verb "to be" is usually the first to go, along with articles such as "the" or "an" (First UK City put... rather than The first UK city is put...)

These are generally all designed as to save space, but the stacking also shows the other function of Headlinese — it sounds more exciting, and is designed to draw you in and make you want to read the article. Headlines also make use of

• puns (This is a story about the Honours list in the UK. One of the people being knighted was a member of the Bee Gees, who had a hit with the song Saturday Night Fever.)

• alliteration

• rhyming

You should see that none of those examples are written in standard English. It's designed to be understandable at a glance, and make the most of the limited space, but invites you to read further to get the whole story.