The headline on page 2 of The Business Times on March 19, 2014, read: China money market funds expose chinks in banking

If reading this doesn't put a smirk on your face, you can slowly back away and read something else because you wouldn't know what the issue is.

Here's some context: The last time something similar happened was back in February 2012, when Jeremy Lin was a hotshot player, Linsanity was actually a phenomenon and the New York Knicks was the unbeatable basketball team.

And after the Knicks unexpectedly lost their winning streak then, ESPN put up a report :

Some people wouldn't read too much into things, but others would. The headline caused a major brouhaha, given that the "chink" racial slur was used on Lin when he was playing in Harvard.

ESPN subsequently fired an employee responsible for the headline, having deemed it to be "offensive".

Coincidentally, an ESPN anchor who used the same phrase on air was suspended for 30 days.

But here's the deal: Make no mistake, headlines are meant to draw attention.

And given that editors and writers had time to mull over the written word before it got published only makes the unintentional slur funnier, especially when there's "China" right there in the same sentence.

Find Mothership.SG on Facebook and Twitter.