In short

A front page hands you one long sentence and no help with it. Fully marked, a typical headline runs: وَزيرُ خارِجِيَّةِ جُمْهورِيَّةِ مِصْرَ العَرَبِيَّةِ يَبْحَثُ في الرِّياضِ اسْتِئْنافَ المُفاوَضاتِ - “the foreign minister of the Arab Republic of Egypt discusses the resumption of the talks in Riyadh”. Nothing in it is new grammar: four words welded into one إِضافَة chain, an imperfect verb standing for a past event, a مَصْدَر doing the work of a second verb. What is new is the density - press Arabic packs more structure per word than any register you have met, and prints none of the endings that hold that structure together.

Here is the same line as a paper sets it - the bare unvocalized page, borrowed once more because a headline is exactly where you meet it: وزير خارجية جمهورية مصر العربية يبحث في الرياض استئناف المفاوضات. What this lesson builds is the set of parsing habits that survive that deletion: where a chain ends, which noun a trailing adjective belongs to, the twenty-odd مَصادِر and compound prepositions the style runs on, and how a source line is worded. Older and more literary registers belong to lesson 70; this is the Arabic of today’s news.

The rule

1. What a headline deletes, and what it puts in. A headline is a compressed sentence, and the compressions are regular:

• The vowel marks go, as they do in most printed Arabic - the Qur’an, poetry and children’s books are the standing exceptions, and this path is another.
• The imperfect stands for a completed event: الرَّئيسُ يَزورُ تونِسَ, exactly like English “President visits Tunisia”. The article’s body then switches to the past: زارَ الرَّئيسُ تونِسَ.
• The topic comes first: a headline opens with the noun it is about (الرَّئيسُ يَزورُ…), where an ordinary narrative sentence opens with its verb (زارَ الرَّئيسُ…).
• The verb may vanish altogether, leaving a pure nominal phrase built on a مَصْدَر: ارْتِفاعُ أَسْعارِ النِّفْطِ بَعْدَ قَرارِ التَّحالُفِ. This is the most typical shape of all.

2. The long إِضافَة chain: only the last term is definite. Lesson 20 gave you two-term إِضافَة and lesson 42 extended it; the press runs the same machine to four and five terms: اجْتِماعُ وُزَراءِ خارِجِيَّةِ دُوَلِ الاتِّحادِ الأُوروبِّيِّ - “the meeting of the foreign ministers of the states of the European Union”. Three properties do all the parsing work:

• Only the first term takes the case the sentence assigns (اجْتِماعُ, nominative). Every later term is genitive, no exception.
• Only the last term may carry الـ, or be a proper noun, or take an attached pronoun. A term in the middle can never be definite by itself.
• Nothing may be inserted between the links - no adjective, no preposition, no number.

So the chain closes at the first word carrying الـ or a proper name, and everything that follows is commentary on one of the links. Read وَزيرُ - خارِجِيَّةِ - جُمْهورِيَّةِ - مِصْرَ and stop: مِصْرَ is a proper noun, so the chain has ended and العَرَبِيَّةِ after it is an adjective.

3. The trailing adjective: case first, then gender. Because adjectives have to wait until the chain is complete, the reader has to send each one back to its own noun. Case does it:

• وَزيرُ الخارِجِيَّةِ الأَمْريكِيُّ - nominative, so it can only describe وَزيرُ (also nominative). The American Secretary of State.
• وَزيرُ الخارِجِيَّةِ الأَمْريكِيَّةِ - genitive and feminine, so it describes الخارِجِيَّةِ: the minister of the American foreign ministry, a different claim.

On the bare page the case is invisible, but gender is not: the ة of الأَمْريكِيَّة is printed, so whenever the candidate nouns differ in gender the adjective still gives itself away. When they do not - مُنَظَّمَةُ الصِّحَّةِ العالَمِيَّةُ, where both are feminine - only knowledge of the world tells you that العالَمِيَّةُ belongs to مُنَظَّمَةُ.

4. Place names are diptotes. Most country and city names are مَمْنوعٌ مِنَ الصَّرْفِ (lesson 41): no tanwīn ever, and the genitive is a fatḥa, not a kasra - في مِصْرَ، إِلى تونِسَ، مِنْ لُبْنانَ، في بَيْروتَ. Names that carry الـ behave normally (في العِراقِ، في السّودانِ، في الرِّياضِ), and so does a diptote heading its own إِضافَة: مِنْ مَصادِرَ دِبْلوماسِيَّةٍ (fatḥa) against مِنْ مَصادِرِ الوِزارَةِ (kasra, because مَصادِر is now a مُضاف).

5. The nominal, مَصْدَر-heavy style. Where English writes a verb, the press writes its verbal noun and hangs the participants off it as an إِضافَة. The مَصْدَر keeps its verb’s government (lesson 67): its subject becomes the genitive second term, its object stays accusative.

• ارْتَفَعَتْ أَسْعارُ النِّفْطِ → ارْتِفاعُ أَسْعارِ النِّفْطِ
• أَعْلَنَتِ الحُكومَةُ رَفْعَ الدَّعْمِ → إِعْلانُ الحُكومَةِ رَفْعَ الدَّعْمِ (the second مَصْدَر is the object of the first, and stays in the accusative)

The productive inventory is small and almost entirely Forms II, IV, VI, VII, VIII and X (lessons 46-48): إِعْلانٌ، ارْتِفاعٌ، انْخِفاضٌ، اسْتِئْنافٌ، تَوْقيعٌ، تَراجُعٌ، اسْتِقْبالٌ، تَصْريحٌ. Twenty of them, learned with their verbs, open up most headlines.

6. The compound prepositions. These are nouns frozen in place, and every one of them puts the following noun in the genitive: إِثْرَ and عَقِبَ (in the immediate wake of), بِشَأْنِ (concerning), حَوْلَ (about), في إِطارِ (as part of), عَلى خَلْفِيَّةِ (against the background of), بِهَدَفِ (with the aim of), بِسَبَبِ، خِلالَ، مِنْ أَجْلِ. Four of them - إِثْرَ، عَقِبَ، حَوْلَ، خِلالَ - carry a visible fatḥa because they are adverbial accusatives (lesson 31) heading an إِضافَة, so what follows them is genitive all the same: إِثْرَ اجْتِماعٍ طارِئٍ.

7. Support verbs: قامَ بِـ، أَجْرى، شَهِدَ. Instead of a plain verb, the press often uses a light verb plus a مَصْدَر - it lets the writer attach adjectives to the action.

• قامَ بِـ + genitive مَصْدَر: قامَ الوَزيرُ بِزِيارَةٍ رَسْمِيَّةٍ. Only بِـ works here.
• أَجْرى (Form IV, defective - lesson 51) + accusative مَصْدَر: أَجْرى الطَّرَفانِ مُحادَثاتٍ - a sound feminine plural takes a kasra in the accusative (lesson 9).
• شَهِدَ with a place or a period as its subject: شَهِدَتِ العاصِمَةُ ارْتِفاعًا حادًّا.

8. تَمَّ, the passive dodge. تَمَّ (root تمم, doubled - lesson 49) means “was completed”, and builds a passive out of any مَصْدَر without touching the verb: تَمَّ تَوْقيعُ الاتِّفاقِيَّةِ = “the agreement was signed”. The مَصْدَر is the فاعِل of تَمَّ, so it is nominative, and تَمَّ agrees with it: تَمَّتِ المُوافَقَةُ عَلى المَشْروعِ. جَرى works the same way. The genuine passive (lesson 52) lives on beside it - أُعْلِنَ عَنْ خُطَّةٍ جَديدَةٍ، عُقِدَ الاجْتِماعُ - and reads as less bureaucratic; prefer it in your own writing.

9. Sourcing and attribution. A news sentence says where it got its claim: ذَكَرَتْ وَكالَةُ الأَنْباءِ أَنَّ…، أَفادَتْ مَصادِرُ…، صَرَّحَ مَسْؤولٌ… Three frozen adverbials do the rest, all accusative مَصادِر (lesson 60): نَقْلًا عَنْ (quoting), وَفْقًا لِـ (according to - the لِـ is not negotiable), اسْتِنادًا إِلى. Further quotes hang off حال participles (lesson 55): مُشيرًا إِلى أَنَّ…، مُضيفًا أَنَّ…

The one rule to memorise: after قالَ the complementizer is إِنَّ, after everything else it is أَنَّ. قالَ الوَزيرُ إِنَّ الاجْتِماعَ مُثْمِرٌ - but أَكَّدَ الوَزيرُ أَنَّ الاجْتِماعَ مُثْمِرٌ. Both are إِنَّ and its sisters from lesson 44, so the noun after them is accusative either way. After a preposition only أَنَّ is possible: بِأَنَّ، إِلى أَنَّ.

10. Numbers, casualties and percentages. Papers print digits and leave you to supply the number word, but the counted noun still obeys lesson 26 - so the noun tells you how to read the digit. أَكْثَرُ مِنْ 20 قَتيلًا is singular accusative because 20 falls in the 11-99 band; 3 قَتْلى is plural because 3-10 annexes a plural. أَكْثَرُ is itself a diptote: إِلى أَكْثَرَ مِنْ 20 قَتيلًا. Percentages are بِنِسْبَةِ + digit + بِالمِئَةِ (also في المِئَةِ): ارْتَفَعَتِ الصّادِراتُ بِنِسْبَةِ 5 بِالمِئَةِ. Vague quantities use an إِضافَة: عَشَراتُ القَتْلى، مِئاتُ المُشارِكينَ، آلافُ النّازِحينَ.

A flag on the digits. Many Arab papers - Egyptian and Gulf ones above all - print Arabic-Indic numerals (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩), while Maghrebi papers use 0-9. This path writes 0-9 throughout, so expect the other shapes on a real page; they change nothing about the grammar.

11. Six heuristics that survive the missing marks. (1) The first word with الـ closes the إِضافَة chain. (2) A bare final ا on an indefinite noun is an accusative - قتيلا، ارتفاعا، نقلا، وفقا - so it is a تَمْييز, a حال or an object. (3) ـون / ـين and ـان / ـين are printed, so sound plurals and duals keep their case even unvocalized: المشاركون is a subject, المشاركين is not. (4) The ة on a trailing adjective names its noun whenever the candidates differ in gender. (5) A feminine singular verb after a plural noun (الدول أعلنت) means the plural is non-human (lesson 11). (6) Do not attempt a full إِعْراب of a headline - find the chain, the مَصْدَر and the source, and read on.

Forms & patterns

The headline, taken apart

The press مَصادِر you cannot avoid

Compound prepositions - all of them govern the genitive

Support verbs and the case of the مَصْدَر

تَمَّ - the slice you need (a doubled verb, root تمم)

Numbers as the page prints them

Examples

Common mistakes

• في مِصْرِ -> في مِصْرَ - most place names are مَمْنوعٌ مِنَ الصَّرْفِ: no tanwīn, and the genitive is a fatḥa. Same for إِلى تونِسَ، مِنْ لُبْنانَ، في بَيْروتَ - but في العِراقِ, because الـ restores the normal endings.
• الوَزيرُ الخارِجِيَّةِ -> وَزيرُ الخارِجِيَّةِ - the first term of an إِضافَة never takes الـ. It is definite already, by way of the last term in the chain.
• وَزيرُ الخارِجِيَّةِ الأَمْريكِيَّةِ (meaning the minister) -> وَزيرُ الخارِجِيَّةِ الأَمْريكِيُّ - genitive feminine sends the adjective to الخارِجِيَّةِ; you wanted nominative masculine, on وَزيرُ.
• قالَ الوَزيرُ أَنَّ الاجْتِماعَ مُثْمِرٌ -> قالَ الوَزيرُ إِنَّ الاجْتِماعَ مُثْمِرٌ - after قالَ it is always إِنَّ with a kasra. أَنَّ goes with أَكَّدَ، ذَكَرَ، أَضافَ، أَوْضَحَ and with every preposition.
• الدُّوَلُ المُشارِكَةُ أَعْلَنوا -> الدُّوَلُ المُشارِكَةُ أَعْلَنَتْ - دُوَل is a non-human plural, so adjective and verb both go feminine singular (lesson 11).
• أَكْثَرُ مِنْ 20 قَتْلى -> أَكْثَرُ مِنْ 20 قَتيلًا - the digit hides the word عِشْرينَ, and 11-99 takes a singular accusative تَمْييز. Read the digit before you spell the noun.
• تَمَّ تَوْقيعَ الاتِّفاقِيَّةِ -> تَمَّ تَوْقيعُ الاتِّفاقِيَّةِ - after تَمَّ the مَصْدَر is the subject, not the object, so it is nominative. تَمَّ has no object at all.
• إِعْلانُ الحُكومَةِ رَفْعُ الدَّعْمِ -> إِعْلانُ الحُكومَةِ رَفْعَ الدَّعْمِ - a مَصْدَر keeps its verb’s government (lesson 67): the doer becomes the genitive of the إِضافَة, the object stays accusative.
• بِشَأْنَ الأَزْمَةِ -> بِشَأْنِ الأَزْمَةِ - بِشَأْنِ is بِـ plus a noun, so it is genitive itself. إِثْرَ، عَقِبَ، حَوْلَ and خِلالَ keep a fatḥa, being adverbial accusatives.
• وَفْقًا إِلى بَيانٍ رَسْمِيٍّ -> وَفْقًا لِبَيانٍ رَسْمِيٍّ - each frozen adverbial has one fixed preposition: وَفْقًا لِـ، نَقْلًا عَنْ، اسْتِنادًا إِلى، بِناءً عَلى.

Tips

• Parse every headline in the same order: find where الـ closes the chain, name the head noun, then attach the trailing adjectives by gender. Endings come last, if at all.
• Twenty مَصادِر buy you most of a front page. Take them from real headlines with their verbs attached - ارْتَفَعَ / ارْتِفاعٌ، أَعْلَنَ / إِعْلانٌ - so the pair enters your memory as one item.
• Recognise the support verbs, but write plainly: أَعْلَنَتِ الوِزارَةُ is better prose than قامَتِ الوِزارَةُ بِالإِعْلانِ, and Arab style guides say so too.
• Keep قالَ إِنَّ as a single unbreakable chunk, the way you keep an English irregular verb.
• The indefinite accusative alif is the one ending the page still shows you - قتيلا، ارتفاعا، نقلا. Train yourself to notice it; it marks objects, تَمْييز and حال for free.
• Expect ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ on Egyptian and Gulf pages and 0-9 in the Maghreb. The digits differ, the grammar of the counted noun does not.
• Read one lead paragraph a day out loud, in pausal form. Two weeks of that does more for this register than any amount of analysis.
• Do not carry these habits backwards into literature or older texts: this nominal, agency-sourced style is a twentieth-century creation. Lesson 70 handles what came before it.