Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended to be humorous rather than the literal truth.[failed verification]
The maxim has been cited by other names since 1991, when a published compilation of Murphy's Law variants cal...