The [journalism] instructor stressed his formula for writing the ideal headline to describe the story below it–a job in which every letter in every word counts (and W’s and M’s, being fat, count double …). You look for the specific word first. Use the specific “pistol” and switch to the general “gun” only if pistol is too long for the line.

I took this dogma with me to the newsroom of The Daily Oklahoman … The slot man … handed to me [a trivial story] that reported a woman filing suit against a doctor who had operated on her eleven years earlier. A subsequent surgery had revealed that the first surgeon hadn’t extracted one of his forceps before stitching up the abdomen.

I wrote: SURGEON’S FORCEPS / LEFT IN WOMAN / ELEVEN YEARS.

The slot man told me the line was too long and tossed it back to me to revise. Forceps is specific of what? It’s a tool, right? The first line became Surgeon’s Tool. That fit. Hours pass with more headlines written. The bulldog edition comes up from the printing plant. The night city editor scans it. Reaches page 27. Shouts: Stop the press, glowers at the slot man, and says, “Who wrote this!” I am identified as the culprit …

That Stop the press shout is often heard in old movies, but that was the only time I ever heard it in real life. Professor Herbert called me in, and … seemed perfectly satisfied that I could be blamed only for innocence in a world full of night city editors with dirty minds. I got a “B” in the course.

Tony Hillerman, Seldom Disppointed, pp. 172 – 173