
Colons in computer science paper titles (2018) - mjn
http://www.kmjn.org/notes/colons_in_dblp_titles.html
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phyzome
It must have taken superhuman willpower not to title this "Colons in computer-
science paper titles: Threat, or menace?"

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klyrs
Colons in computer-science paper titles: considered unreasonably harmful

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wyldfire
An English teacher that I had around ~20 years ago told the class that there
were studies that considered the effect of a colon in the title alone and they
suggested that having a colon in your title resulted in a better grade for
your paper.

As a result, I generally take a second or two to write a title that works as
phrases separated by a colon. I'll assume I've reaped some ever-so-mild
benefit in my career. ;)

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cgriswald
I wonder if more colons in the title improves grades further: "The Broadcast
MAC Address: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF"

Edit: On second thought, I think there might be some secondary psychological
effects with that title that might harm the grade after all.

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bloak
At least papers don't have subtitles (I think). When I have to record the
title of a book, if there's a colon or a dash in it then I find it hard to
know whether it's being used to separate the "title" from the "subtitle".
Alternatively, if I know there's a subtitle then I don't know what to do when
entering the data into a form that doesn't accept a subtitle. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(titling)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_\(titling\))
for more information on this point of pedantry.

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kd0amg
_At least papers don 't have subtitles (I think)._

I've seen a few printed as having subtitles, including one with both a colon
_and_ a subtitle.

[http://brrian.org/papers/ecoop2011-javascript-
eval.pdf](http://brrian.org/papers/ecoop2011-javascript-eval.pdf)

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.03832.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.03832.pdf)

[https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/pmmwp...](https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/pmmwplck-
python-full-monty/paper.pdf)

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leothekim
"XYZ considered harmful" is the other one I see in various papers and online
posts. Boy does that one get mileage.

[https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html](https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html)

If only that were titled "'Considered Harmful': Considered Harmful".

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chrisseaton
I don't think those 'considered harmful papers' are actually computer science
papers though? Things like 'Go To Statement Considered Harmful' were magazine
articles rather than papers.

~~~
ncmncm
It was more like a letter to the editor. But the editor invented the title.

Probably should have been "considered as harmful". We would all be better off
today.

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webwielder2
[https://www.theonion.com/a-statement-followed-by-a-
question-...](https://www.theonion.com/a-statement-followed-by-a-question-
separated-by-a-colon-1819588961)

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shoo
based on "bad extrapolation of trends by eye": we should expect to hit
saturation point with a proportion of 1.0 cs papers containing colons by 2180.

this leaves directions for future research: "Colons in paper-titles: are other
characters even necessary?"

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mjn
It seemed too frivolous to include in the blog post (I'm the author), but I
fit an exponential to the last 10 years for Twitter consumption, which
predicts 100% colon titles as early as 2050:
[https://twitter.com/mm_jj_nn/status/1055555513658810368](https://twitter.com/mm_jj_nn/status/1055555513658810368)

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mannykannot
Right now, 6 of the 30 headlines on the HN front page contain colons.

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leblancfg
Minor gripe: that error band needs some tweaking. You can't have negative
proportions.

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GGfpc
A lot of the most recent titles featuring colons aren't the type "Proposition:
Question?". Most of the papers I read with colons in the title are similar to
"Project Name: Project Description"

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ape4
Next time I am going to write algorithm64() instead of quicksort()

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joker3
Somebody ought to do a breakdown by subfield.

