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points

by thaumasiotes3 hours ago |

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by 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

by 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

by fragmede3 hours ago|

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How about

> Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack announce that it had Tetris

by rsynnott2 hours ago|

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The sticker seems like an important aspect.

by fragmede2 hours ago|

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Which the article can state, but the headline needs to fit.

by 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.

by degamad3 hours ago|

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Headlines have long had their own grammatical rules only roughly aligning to English in the limit...

by thaumasiotes1 hours ago|

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This is not something that could appear in any newspaper.