http://www.wikihow.com/Not-to-Develop-an-Inferiority-Complex
We have a Featured Article with a grammatically incorrect title. I know it’s been mentioned on the article’s discussion page, but I think it deserves to be mentioned in here too, just so we’re all aware. How did this manage to slip through the cracks?
All I’m saying is that we should be a bit more careful with this sort of thing.
Ttrimm
3
Hmmm…I am guessing you never screwed up??
If there was a way to like peoples comments here, I would… ttrimm, I like your comment.
system
5
Wow, good catch. I do want to assure everyone that before an article is featured, it’s looked over by Felicity (heavily), Krystle, and me. I am not sure how this one managed to slip through, but I made a rare exception and changed the title while it’s being featured right now. Again, thanks for catching that.
oh…pone…haha…good job everybody!
system
7
I do appreciate constructive feedback so thank you for picking it up. Sometimes things slip through because of the way the eye reads & normal expectation of how a title reads. As far as I am aware, I don’t make a habit of this but thank you for reminding me to take more care. Eric, thanks for the fix.
system
8
I know we generally try to avoid the “how to not…” title format, but in some cases I think it’s alright to allow an exception, especially when it relates to the way people speak in everyday life, and how they search. For example, in the past we featured “How to Not Be Annoying”
. Grammatically incorrect, perhaps, but sounds much more natural than “How to Avoid Being Annoying”. If you look at how people search this phrase via Google keywords
, you’ll see that the “incorrect” title is far more commonly searched:As for how this “managed to slip through the cracks” --I just wanted to point out that I reviewed this title and thought it was fine the way it was, but I can understand why people would think otherwise. That being said, it’s better to change a title before an article is featured rather than after, because it can break the way a title is displayed (especially in iGoogle). If you’d like to help, well, “seal the cracks”, you can add the RSS feed
to your watchlist, so that you can help review the titles whenever they get updates. Then let me know if there’s a title that should be changed, so that both the title and the feed can be updated to prevent broken title issues.
system
9
Yes, we do want to try and choose titles that are more commonly searched; however, we shouldn’t put search query numbers over grammatically correct titles. This was a rare occasion. I think we’re pretty good about choosing good titles.
system
10
Ah, I just realized it was “How to not todevelop…” vs. “How to not develop…” I thought the complaint was about starting a title with “How to not…” I totally missed that extra “to”. I still think the original intended title, “How to Not Develop an Inferiority Complex” would’ve been fine. Is anyone here enough of a grammar expert to explain why/whether “how to not (verb)” is grammatically incorrect? In this case “not” seems like an adverb. This page says “not” can be used as an adverb: http://home-ed.info/grammar/adverbs.html
Tdubell
11
The original intended title, “How to Not Develop an Inferiority Complex” is correct. The only problem I guess, was the extra “to”.
I’d copy and paste Thomas’ message and add an agreed at the end but I think that’ll just come off as annoying.
