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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42837
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are a couple questions out there on [How to ask a smart question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18584/how-to-ask-a-smart-question) and the FAQ has [its own tips](https://writing.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask-beta), but lets assume you know how to _ask_ what you want. From a purely writing perspective, most of the advice out there is rather beginner level. It's about getting people to use paragraphs and direct statements. But how do we elevate that. What goes into _writing_ an amazing Stack Exchange question.

Some things I've observed in my short time here:

- **Title** Titles are massively important to getting people to read your question.
- **Formatting** The advice out there all says use proper formatting but what does that mean?
- **Effort** The best received questions demonstrate effort. However I have personally had questions appear like they lacked effort when they didn't and vice versa.
- **Ease of Communication** On a site for experts a lot of us want to sound like experts ourselves, but when asking questions we don't really know the answer do we? Else, why ask? On the other hand simpler language is more accessible to potential answerers, opening up the possibility to receive a quality answer.

Original score: 4