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This is an off-topic comment, but in the title it seems the word "for" was replaced by the letter "4" -- is this a common substitution for NH titles? Was it do

This is an off-topic comment, but in the title it seems the word "for" was replaced by the letter "4" -- is this a common substitution for NH titles? Was it done because of length constraints?

napsterbr 5y ago
> Was it done because of length constraints? Yep, most likely. The title has exactly 80 characters, which is the limit. "Years" was also abbreviated.
- drannex 5y ago
  Personal opinion, but I think it's time that HN increases the character limit, we are seeing more and more of these sort of things.
  - kazinator 5y ago
    It's a tricky business. In terms of raw screen width, we have it. Or do we? Not necessarily on mobile, in portrait orientation. From a readability/usability perspective, imagine the HN front page being filled top to bottom with titles, some of which go to 150 characters; what would that be like? (A mock-up could be easily obtained for evaluation; or HN could just experiment with it for a few days.) Currently, most titles don't strain the existing limit. When we scan the front page now, for instance, there are good many short and medium length titles. A modest increase, say by +20 characters, might relieve most of the pressure without too many negative effects. Which is to say that maybe the current limit is a bit to the left of the true "sweet spot".
    - tux3 5y ago
      I think I'd be happy with longer titles, since that's an artificial limitation separate from how we vote and judge submissions. If posts have unnecessarily long titles enough to bother, they'll be systematically downvoted a little more and fall out of practice. If the system wanted to put a hard limit on wordiness, it should have a good reason why! We're all wasting a little time on inefficiencies otherwise.
colechristensen 5y ago
You could also change “receives” to “gets” and eliminate the word “treatment” to remove all need for awkward shortening.

This is an off-topic comment, but in the title it seems the word "for" was replaced by the letter "4" -- is this a common substitution for NH titles? Was it done because of length constraints?

napsterbr 5y ago

> Was it done because of length constraints? Yep, most likely. The title has exactly 80 characters, which is the limit. "Years" was also abbreviated.

drannex 5y ago
Personal opinion, but I think it's time that HN increases the character limit, we are seeing more and more of these sort of things.
- kazinator 5y ago
  It's a tricky business. In terms of raw screen width, we have it. Or do we? Not necessarily on mobile, in portrait orientation. From a readability/usability perspective, imagine the HN front page being filled top to bottom with titles, some of which go to 150 characters; what would that be like? (A mock-up could be easily obtained for evaluation; or HN could just experiment with it for a few days.) Currently, most titles don't strain the existing limit. When we scan the front page now, for instance, there are good many short and medium length titles. A modest increase, say by +20 characters, might relieve most of the pressure without too many negative effects. Which is to say that maybe the current limit is a bit to the left of the true "sweet spot".
  - tux3 5y ago
    I think I'd be happy with longer titles, since that's an artificial limitation separate from how we vote and judge submissions. If posts have unnecessarily long titles enough to bother, they'll be systematically downvoted a little more and fall out of practice. If the system wanted to put a hard limit on wordiness, it should have a good reason why! We're all wasting a little time on inefficiencies otherwise.

colechristensen 5y ago

You could also change “receives” to “gets” and eliminate the word “treatment” to remove all need for awkward shortening.