Form, function and actual practice in the use of headlines, on the one hand, and, on the other, growing research in the field warrant a consideration of press headlines as a discourse type in its own right. The chapter sets out to chart and analyse the use of metaphor in the sub-field of business press headlines with the added aim of exposing the most productive patterns within the field and how these foster communication. From the reader's point of view, headlines reconcile the apparently contradictory in that they are recognized to be singularly complex and yet, at the same time, they exercise an equally singular appeal to that reader's attention. On the basis of strongly supported empirical evidence, we propose to isolate the most productive metaphor patterns or mechanisms involved in business press headlines and then to go on and analyse such patterns and show how they serve to reconcile the above perplexing claim. (Michael White and Honesto Herrera)