Would we want to allow ... or spaces before question marks at the end of titles?

Question

As a question-quality measure, Stack Exchange automatically rewrites question titles which end with punctuation, following a couple of rules:

• Multiple ? collapsed into one
• Multiple . collapsed into one
• ?! and similar collapsed into ?
• Spaces before trailing punctuation removed (with one exception)
• Everywhere but the trilogy, multiple ! collapsed in one

These are common-sense on most sites: "Why do planets spin ?" is simply poor English. However, we're special. I'm asking if we would want some flexibility on these title rules. The two most obvious things I can see are allowing trailing ... and trailing ?, both for extend-the-sequence puzzles. For us, a title of "What's the next number: 1, 2, 4, ?" is better than "What's the next number: 1, 2, 4,?"; the latter looks ugly to me in its inconsistent spacing. (There are workarounds: see how Which number replaces the question mark in <16, 2, 11, 6, 9, 4, 14, ?> uses <> to enclose its sequence and get around the punctuation rewriter.) There are other use-cases for us as well; I'm sure that people who get creative with titles wouldn't mind a little more room to play around in.

The reason I'm asking for y'alls opinions on this is that, as the "with one exception" link suggests, it is possible to get per-site exceptions on this. French Language SE has a per-site exception to the "no trailing ?" rule, on the basis that it's correct grammar for that language. If we have support here then we could ask SE for our own per-site exception. Or do we not care enough to ask for this?

Answer 1

Yes, we should request exemption from most of these rules

In the question itself @bobble has already pointed out some use cases of relevance to sequence puzzles, but I would suggest that there are even more question types that would benefit from this, including (but not limited to) the following:

• enigmatic-puzzle - the ellipsis is my all-time favourite punctuation mark (as a casual observer of any of my prose would no doubt note...), and aside from indicating further terms of a sequence it also has a role to play in creating suspense, intrigue, and mystery. Use of the ellipsis at the end of a puzzle title would enable question posers to create atmosphere for the settings of their puzzles.

• Another important use of the ellipsis is to imply that a well-known phrase is incomplete. For example, I desperately wanted to call this puzzle of mine just "When in Rome..." (which would have satisfied the minimum-character restraint), because the rest of this phrase when called to mind would then have served as a hint for solving the puzzle. Instead, I had to employ a clunky workaround, which left me feeling a touch dissatisfied.

• The use of multiple question marks at the end of a title would potentially be beneficial for 'missing word' type puzzles, where the number of question marks can be used to represent the number of letters in the missing word. For example, a title of the form 'My dog's got no ????' looks visually more pleasing than 'My dog's got no ?' and for some question-posers might be considered more satisfyingly 'puzzle-like' than 'My dog's got no [BLANK]'. (The latter point there is obviously a question of taste, which having the rule relaxed would enable...)

• Questions posed as a story where the narrator is confused lend themselves nicely to a '?!' ending, again adding tone and atmosphere to the post.

But if possible to opt in to just some of the rules, there are a couple I would recommend retaining:

1. With regards to spaces before end punctuation, I would argue that use of the question mark(s) is the only real exception we would need to this rule (otherwise it is just grammatically incorrect).

2. Retain the exclamation mark collapse rule (with the exception of the trilogy, as at present). While multiple question marks at the end of a title arguably have a purpose, multiple exclamation marks just look tacky!!!!!

One final caveat, note:

If the rules are relaxed, their accepted use cases within the community should be preserved in a meta post that can be consulted when necessary. After all, nobody wants an 'edit war' based off different users' personal preferences.