Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for 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, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended as a humorous adage rather than the literal truth. The maxim has been cited by other names since as early as 1991, when a published compilation of Murphy's Law variants called it "Davis's la...
