SN has no moderators, well, some outlawyers, but in general no one will require you to use “good” titles for your posts. Whatever a good title is, it must be no more than 80 characters.
Apart from some clickbiters, and some really short one, in general I feel we stackers are pretty god at titling posts. I thought I'd share here some references for anyone willing to improve this skill or wondering how best to write a title.
The first important aspect is to include enough info in the title so that visitors can mostly guess what your topic is about. Try to condense your post's main idea into a few sentences. Ideally, stackers will be triggered by its contents and click aiming to learn more and if its the case, write useful and on-topic replies.
Terrible titles include:
- “A question”
- “I was wondering...”
- “Someone help me”
These titles are better, though still not great:
- “A question about Bitcoin”
- “Survey of the community”
- “I have a problem with ...”
These titles are good:
- “Bitcoin takes too long to start. How can I speed it up?”
- “Poll: What is your gender?”
- “Whenever I try to send a query, the terminal gives me an error”
When asking a question, never use a title like “How to send BTC”; it makes the topic look like a guide on how to do something instead of a question about how to do it.
Some people like to put “tags” in the title within brackets, like [AskSN] before ~AskSN and [Parent Corner] between others. I personally don't like this approach. I'd prefer to read the tag info contextualized within the title. When tags are recurring, it may indicate that a new subterritory should be created, whenever this feature will be available.
Use normal capitalization, not “newspaper capitalization”: “Post title style guide” instead of “Post Title Style Guide”. Capitalize the first letter of the title unless it a trademark like “eMachines”.
Avoid FULL CAPITALIZED titles, it can be perceived as aggressive or attention-seeking, similar to someone shouting on the street. It come across as rude, unprofessional, and is not welcoming. It also make the title much less readable... s think twice before using ALLCAPS!
Omit unimportant leading words. “Selling $100” instead of “I'm selling $100”. Other than that, it's best to write a grammatically correct sentence if doing so does not make the title annoyingly long.
If the title is composed of only one sentence, don't include a period at the end. If it contains two or more sentences, put a period after each sentence, including the last.
Questions must end with a question mark. Or should they not when posted in AskSN?