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  1. How to listen to music
  2. How a City in France got out the World's first Short-Story vending machines
  3. How we learn fairness
  4. What makes great detective fiction according to T.S. Elliot
  5. What went wrong at St Marks Bookshop

I see that in the New Yorker we have these headlines. Even though they do not have question marks, are these questions? (Specially the first three examples)

Mike
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    No, they're not questions. You could replace "how" with "the way" in the first 3 examples. – Greg Lee Feb 19 '16 at 08:09
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    These may be considered as deletions of complement clauses (I know / Get to know how to listen to music), which do not take question marks. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 19 '16 at 11:09
  • Edwin Ashworth. Can you please elaborate on that? I mean, when I say "I know how to listen music" or "Get to know how to list to music" I believe these are indirect questions, am I right? – Mike Feb 20 '16 at 15:14

1 Answers1

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How can be used in three contexts: As an adverb: How do you make fish-and-chips? As a conjunction: I know how this is done. As a modifier to express surprise: How remarkable!

tom
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  • Are you saying that the three sentences are questions? –  Feb 19 '16 at 08:23
  • Perhaps you could explain the how and why of there being only three contexts. – deadrat Feb 19 '16 at 08:40
  • So "how" in the post is used as a conjunction, akin to "Why to listen to music". But the construction is special: nothing is connected really, which would normally be what conjunctions do. Can you elaborate on that construction? – Peter - Reinstate Monica Feb 19 '16 at 09:06
  • @Rathony. No, I am merely giving three examples of using how. – tom Feb 19 '16 at 10:43
  • @deadrat. There could more than just three contexts, I just provided three examples in this answer. – tom Feb 19 '16 at 10:53
  • @Peter A. Schneider. I agree it is a little unusual but it could be understood as I know [and] how this is done. – tom Feb 19 '16 at 10:55
  • The question is are these questions? Does your post answer the question? –  Feb 19 '16 at 11:26
  • @Rathony. Obviously, two of them are not. As I said before, I was just giving examples of the usage of how, and providing three instances. – tom Feb 19 '16 at 11:45
  • You don't need to explain it to me. You could edit your post with an answer by clicking on edit. –  Feb 19 '16 at 11:55
  • As I know, there are two kinds of questions (direct and indirect questions). "I know how this is done" seems to me an indirect question. As Sydney Greenbaum's example: "They told me what the topic should be." Am I right? – Mike Feb 20 '16 at 15:37