So our ability to distinguish "man bites dog" from "dog bites man" hinges on the attention that we pay to ordering and grouping, that allows us to get two different meanings out of the same set of words.

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Man bits dog is news, dog bites man rather less so.

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The man-bites-dog part of this story is that the judge overseeing the case actually stepped in and sanctioned the law firms for their work.

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Northern newspapers approached lynchings as though they were dog bites man stories, hardly worth a column of text.

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What was something to behold was the willingness of the media to be borne along by the story, which had all the attributes of dog-bites-man, instead of the reverse.

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