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by thaumasiotes4 hours ago |
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upvoteby OuterVale4 hours ago|
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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.
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upvoteby thaumasiotes3 hours ago|
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Usually, when you're editing something, you try to make sure your output is legal in the target language.
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upvoteby piltdownman3 hours ago|
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The 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

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upvoteby thaumasiotes1 hours ago|
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> 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

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upvoteby fragmede3 hours ago|
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How about

> Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack announce that it had Tetris

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upvoteby rsynnott2 hours ago|
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The sticker seems like an important aspect.
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upvoteby fragmede2 hours ago|
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Which the article can state, but the headline needs to fit.
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upvoteby Ukv1 hours ago|
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Why 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.

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upvoteby degamad3 hours ago|
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Headlines have long had their own grammatical rules only roughly aligning to English in the limit...
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upvoteby thaumasiotes1 hours ago|
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This is not something that could appear in any newspaper.
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