Idiom
bus plunge
Meaning
A phrase often used in filler story headlines in print newspapers, prior to the adoption of computer-aided typesetting and publishing methods, as it filled out the usual width of a column in the eight-column layout then prevalent in the industry.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Editors used the bus plunge headline to fill empty space on the page.”
“The printer adds a bus plunge to fix the column length.”
“Every small bus plunge helps the editor finish the page design.”
“In the era of physical typesetting, the bus plunge was a common filler headline used to balance the columns of a newspaper.”
“The young journalist noticed that the back page featured a bus plunge because the lead story was too short for the layout.”
“Old newspapers often contain a bus plunge about a distant accident just to make the text look even on the paper.”
“While reviewing the archives, the historian explained how a bus plunge from a remote country often appeared when a local reporter failed to meet their word count.”
“Before digital publishing transformed the industry, the bus plunge served as a reliable, albeit repetitive, placeholder for typesetters struggling to justify the width of their columns.”
Examples
simple
“Editors used the bus plunge headline to fill empty space on the page.”
“The printer adds a bus plunge to fix the column length.”
“Every small bus plunge helps the editor finish the page design.”
contextual
“In the era of physical typesetting, the bus plunge was a common filler headline used to balance the columns of a newspaper.”
“The young journalist noticed that the back page featured a bus plunge because the lead story was too short for the layout.”
“Old newspapers often contain a bus plunge about a distant accident just to make the text look even on the paper.”
“While reviewing the archives, the historian explained how a bus plunge from a remote country often appeared when a local reporter failed to meet their word count.”
complex
“Before digital publishing transformed the industry, the bus plunge served as a reliable, albeit repetitive, placeholder for typesetters struggling to justify the width of their columns.”
Origin
From bus + plunge.
Key words
Related idioms
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