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Cardinal

02:59

I have a very important question

If it's legal that people, myself included, copy a sentence from a book on the ell?

Are we allowed to do that?

Isn't it kind of copyright infringement?

Anonymous

I can’t answer legal questions, but in the U.S. we have something called fair use.

skullpatrol

05:20

Fair use

Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. == History == The 1710 Statute of Anne, an act of the Parliament of Great Britain, created copyright law to repla...

3 hours later…

Martin Sleziak

08:15

Is the phrase "How to prove Pythagorean theorem?" indeed incorrect or unusual? Mathematics Meta: Many users using the phrase “How to prove…?” incorrectly.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

08:41

@MartinSleziak I was expecting some mathematical nuance behind that question. It's extremely pedantic. It's like the guy who reminds you of the 'correct' spelling of sulfur. Basically, "how to do x" is a phrase, not a sense, and that's the starting point for their argument.

It's like the guy that's technically correct but you hate him for it.

I would personally downvote that meta post since it's just a pet peeve discussing which has absolutely zero benefit for the site.

2 hours later…

Anonymous

10:39

@MartinSleziak If you decide question titles have to be phrased as complete sentences, then How to prove X isn't a good question title.

Anonymous

If you don't think question titles need to be phrased as complete sentences, then that's fine, though it probably shouldn't have a question mark at the end. How to prove X is a grammatical phrase, and titles often take the form of phrases.

Anonymous

Interestingly, "Many users using the phrase 'How to prove…?' incorrectly." isn't a complete sentence either, so the criterion which rejects "How to prove X" also rejects their meta question title.

Anonymous

@MartinSleziak Ignoring all that, I'd like to add that I expect the in the question title: How to prove the Pythagorean theorem sounds fine.

Martin Sleziak

11:03

Thanks for the responses!

Probably I should come here a bit more often.

1 hour later…

SmokeDetector

12:06

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (94): "I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold." by Rohan Mehra on ell.SE

2 hours later…

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

13:50

@snailboat Haha didn't notice that.

That is SOOO IRONIC! Maybe.

userr2684291

It's not... because that's not the criterion.

Haha.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Killjoy.

I haven't flipped a table in quite a while. Here

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Majestic.

Anonymous

14:10

What is, then?

Anonymous

Usually when people bring this up, and it happens all the time, they’re complaining that “how to X” is ungrammatical (it’s not) or that it isn’t a complete sentence (which is true).

Anonymous

It’s a little iffy with a question mark, but that’s just because it’s not normally spoken with question intonation.

Anonymous

So then we end up discussing whether question titles should have the form of a complete question, and some people are really keen on this idea for whatever reason. I think it’s mostly useless bikeshedding, but whatever.

Anonymous

255

A: How do I write a good title?

1. Make the topic stand out. The purpose of a title is to attract people interested in your topic or who can give you an answer. People scan web pages quickly; make it easy for them to notice your question and understand what your question is about. Also keep in mind that some people may read qu...

Anonymous

Stack Exchangers in the know apparently consider this post to be horribly outdated and wrong.

Anonymous

14:18

@MarkHarrison This post is severely outdated and no longer true. A lot of your good examples are in fact very bad examples of question titles for our network, by today's standards. Your answer received a bit of attention because it was brought up on Meta Stack Overflow that it's being linked in a notice and giving users bad advice. — animuson ♦ Feb 3 '15 at 16:18

Anonymous

But then, it did get edited a bit since that comment.

Anonymous

Using a Q&A site for documentation doesn’t work…

Anonymous

Oh hey, yeah, the post says lots of different stuff now. But the images are still there, even though they make a different point. Hrm.

Anonymous

Oh well. It’s probably not important.

Anonymous

ELL has much bigger problems with its question titles than whether they’re written as questions.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

19:25