I would like to find out by discussion whether and how this can become a good feature request.
"How to ... ?" questions might be wrong
I see "How to ... ?" questions every day. Only some month ago I learnt that this might be wrong, see:
Can "How to" be a question? - English Language Learners Stack Exchange
The usage of how to to ask a question is a direct translation from the learner's own language: it is not correct as a question in English. The expression is used in titles, for example "How to win friends and influence people".
Mind that this answer does not say anything about "How to ...?", but only about "How to ...". So that this would mean that the latter is also wrong, so that dropping the question mark, as discussed here, would not make it right either. Yet, there is another answer saying (see this other answer at "Can “How to” be a question?":
Are you talking of asking some guy How do I kill an insect ?, versus How to kill an insect ? ? If so, I believe the latter is not grammatically correct. I think How to is used more in titles and such (not in the question form), for example: How to kill all the insects in your house in less than 3 hours.
This is just one voice out of many. But it is a hint that some see it as wrong. And I do not find a proof that it is not wrong.
Asking Questions in English - Youtube - even if this is a very easy beginner's guide, it tells you to ask a question in a full sentence, with a verb in it, so that only "How do I ...?" would be good to go. It does not say anything about "How to ...?" or "How to ..." in a heading.
The first time I ran into this discussion on "How to ...?" questions
I got the links above from a discussion at How to reopen a question that was closed as being not a programming question even if code is not needed to make it a programming question where the last remarks below the question were:
Someone:
Avoid: 1) Asking questions in broken English. [my remark on this: this also meant the "How to ...?" questions] 2) Run-on sentences. 3) Sentence fragments.
Me:
English is not my mother tongue, but as to the few other Q/As that you checked as well, I doubt that the change from "How to [verb]" to "How can I [verb]" is needed, see an example like How to key in "Yes" or "No" in Jupyter notebook. Your link to "Asking questions" is too easy. And if there is a gerund at the beginning, it is a style that I saw in other Q/As as well: "Sharing this since it took me too much time ....:". Not a full sentence, but still something you can write out of nowhere, kind of a quick or loose style. Changing "How to ..." to "How can/do I?" in a header is not needed if it does not end with a question mark, see Can “How to” be a question?. But you are right: "How to ...?", ending with a question mark, is plain wrong, when it is meant as a question. See the same link. Thanks for the many edits.
In the last remark, I still thought that the change from broken English "How to ...?" to "How do I ...?" was not needed, but after reading Can “How to” be a question?, I changed my mind on this.
Further links
- Questions beginning with "How to" - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
- which links to: Is a question beginning with "How to" grammatically correct? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange saying that they are grammatical, but "they are generally confined to informal writing. You wouldn’t expect to find them in academic prose, for example."
Then, if they are grammatical, but still informal, aren't they still plain wrong?
What does it all mean for the discussion here?
In English, you would not ask a "How to ...?"-question, "How to... without a question mark" is more a title saying: this is about..., this guide tells you about..., this question is about... and so on, something you would read in technical guides if you just need to know how things should be done or want to see a list of answers like on Stack Exchange.
Example:
How to fix a collation conflict in a SQL Server query
Were I dropped the question mark that was there before:
(wrong:)
How to fix a collation conflict in a SQL Server query?
I have started dropping the "?" at a few questions and stopped this again since this is Sisyphus work, and even the native English speaking community is clear about it being wrong or not, as seen in the remarks below.
Yet, if I see the English guides on how to ask questions above, it is indeed plain wrong to write this.
The community should not allow wrong English, or English should allow it so far that it is not wrong anymore. And indeed, you find it so often on the internet that English might sooner or later take it up. But for now, having such a widespread grammatical mistake is something that should be dealt with on a top-down level, that is at least my idea of a feature request: cleaning up such questions by dropping the "?" question marker as long as this question mark is at the end.
Another way to stop the flood of "How to ... ?" questions is to warn on the spot, while you enter the question, so that a rule pops up as soon as the question has this pattern.
These are just two ways to go on with, and there are surely more ways, from not doing anything up to doing a big clean up with many people and perhaps with some incentives, or at best, to take the power of AI or Regex or other pattern code.
Discussion
What do you think of this? Should we care about wrong English if perhaps more than half of the people that do not have English as their mother tongue do not even know that it is wrong? Should it be seen as wrong at all, if it is so widespread? You can also prove that it is not wrong, even though that belongs rather to the English Language Learners or English Language and Usage Stack Exchanges.
