A study on the mistakes of headlines in Kompas Newspaper

ABSTRACT

This research uses descriptive qualitative method. The writer focused to observe the phenomena of mistakes in the headline of Kompas newspaper. It means that the researcher collected and described the kinds of mistakes based on the research problem.

This study uses the inductive method in the sense that the conclusion was made after gathered the data. Therefore, the researcher had collected the kinds of mistakes from Kompas in selected editions, 2٠٥٠ 8،h January 2003. The writer has taken it because the language in the headlines became lead of news. It means that headlines of news are a top of the whole news. If there were many mistake sentences, which are not suitable with Indonesian language standardization, automatically, the contents of news would mistake too.

In the early 19805 there were spectacular issues that Indonesian Language in mass media was turn into sideways from Indonesian language standardization. There are some factors which cause journalist made mistake. The first factor is from internal of journalist, they are less vocabulary, limited knowledge in language, bad habit ،،forget in something,” and has no good experience in education. Second is external factor (coming from the outside of journalist) like, limited time and a journalist must follow the deadline from their company, and than there is no language editor.

The result of this research shows there are three kinds of mistakes mostly found in Kompas newspaper. They are, Morphological mistakes totally 75 %و Syntactical mistakes 12,5 % and Vocabulary mistake totally 12,5 %. From the data above, there are no mistakes (0%) in spelling and cutting of sentence too. From analyzing data, the researcher concluded that the highest mistake is on morphological mistake. The characteristic of this mistake is by omitting the suffix (prefix me). In syntactical mistake, the mistake happened by using meaningless word, and the last vocabulary mistake caused by use of euphemism.

Finally, by knowing the characteristic of those mistakes the next journalist never make the same mistake and try to use good Indonesian language.