Timeline for Are questions starting with "How to..." okay?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 25, 2017 at 12:50 | comment | added | dessert | @Dan Yeah, so? What's wrong about that? If it's commonly understood, that's language. A grammar pictures language, it doesn't instruct their users how they ought to use it – at least in the original sense. | |
| Sep 25, 2017 at 12:34 | comment | added | Dan | @dessert In that case, you would end up with a dictionary of "U", "lol", "lmao", and that kind of stuff (it kind of already exists at urbandictionary.com). | |
| Sep 21, 2017 at 22:03 | comment | added | dessert | As a philologist I'd say that it is a legal form, the statistics show it's widely used and understood, and that suffices. It may contradict with a grammatical rule, but then again this rule applies to a language used in totally other contexts. Why shouldn't the globally typed – and never really spoken! – internet English have its own, different grammar? Why should it even not have an own grammar, with such a different setup? | |
| Sep 21, 2017 at 16:13 | comment | added | user692175 | In Latin derived languages is the same as in Bulgarian. What makes the change from a statement to a question is the presence or absence of '?'. But in English is as @terdon commented, the site is English only so we should strive for the best possible "format" according to the currently accepted grammar rules but without being overly fundamentalist about it. At the end of the day it's a usage derived convention and conventions change over time due to changes in frequency of use and others factors. | |
| Sep 21, 2017 at 10:49 | comment | added | terdon Mod | No, it isn't; not grammatically, anyway. The statistics simply show that (of course) the vast majority of internet users are not native English speakers so they make mistakes. Yes, this is a common form in many languages but, in English, "how to" is a statement, not a question. | |
| Sep 20, 2017 at 22:19 | history | edited | pa4080 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 1 character in body
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| Sep 20, 2017 at 21:40 | history | answered | pa4080 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |