9 ms·
Hacker News has an 80 character limit for titles. The full title is 111 characters, so the submitter editorialised it to cut down the length to 77 characters.
by OuterVale 2mo ago
Hacker News has an 80 character limit for titles. The full title is 111 characters, so the submitter editorialised it to cut down the length to 77 characters.
- thaumasiotes 2mo agoUsually, when you're editing something, you try to make sure your output is legal in the target language.
- degamad 2mo agoHeadlines have long had their own grammatical rules only roughly aligning to English in the limit...
- thaumasiotes 2mo agoThis is not something that could appear in any newspaper.
- piltdownman 2mo agoThe shortest 'legal' sentence I can come up with is 82 Characters "Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack have a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?" The had... had... is doing the heavy lifting for omitting the 'did' - but it's perfectly comprehensible. More to the point, 'English' doesn't have a Universal agreed dialect, pronunciation, or spelling. You'd lose your mind trying to square the circle of Hiberno English - the language of Joyce, Beckett, Keane, Wilde, Yeats et al - based on your notions of 'proper' English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English
- fragmede 2mo agoHow about > Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack announce that it had Tetris
- rsynnott 2mo agoThe sticker seems like an important aspect.
- fragmede 2mo agoWhich the article can state, but the headline needs to fit.
- Ukv 2mo agoWhy it was announced specifically on a sticker (rather than on the box like the other games) is the core of the question - the headline no longer really works without it. I'd go with one of: > Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack have a sticker announcing it had Tetris? > Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack announce that it had Tetris on a sticker? > Why the Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing it had Tetris But doesn't really matter that much.
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago> The shortest 'legal' sentence I can come up with is 82 Characters You can put the mangled headline into actual English by shortening it: Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris