Re[2]: Questions that are not questions

[doug montalbano <doug_montalbano -at- CC -dot- CHIRON -dot- COM>]

     Stephen Jong, in attempting to answer Beverly Parks' posting,
     sayeth unto the List:

<deleted>  ... yes, they should indeed be in the form of questions.  In fact,
in the example she cites, I think that her "silly" solution is perfectly fine:
  QUESTION: "When I request an update, my e-mail host returns a
             HOST UNKNOWN message. Why?"
Variants can of course be "Why, when I request an update...?" or "When I
request an update, why does...?"


     Actually, Steve, it appears to me that she was more bothered by the
     the fact that the list was headed QUESTIONS and was asking for
     another way to describe the list.

     But to reply in turn to Steve's remark, the reason that the
     question form isn't used (and the "why?" is implied) is because it
     is necessary to set up the context.  It would be possible to set up
     the sentence so that it follows a question format, but to do so
     would be extremely awkward-sounding, IMO (not H).

     I agree with Steve that following the sentence with a "Why?"
     one-word sentence is a good (although not the only) solution.
     Depending on the type of documentation, the audience, and how much
     time you want to spend on this problem, you could set up the
     contexts in other ways, to allow actual questions.

     And to answer Beverly's original post:  I would probably rename the
     list (if I renamed it at all) "COMMON PROBLEMS", as a subsection of
     whatever section this list is in.

     Doug_Montalbano -at- cc -dot- chiron -dot- com