Yahoo! Answers

Hello, everyone:

We’ve been listening to your feedback and working hard this summer to keep improving Answers. One change you might have noticed is that we’ve incorporated tips on the Ask and Answer pages to help you get the most out of Answers.

Now when you ask or answer a question, you’ll see a yellow speech bubble offering some tips.

If you’ve made any spelling mistakes (we all type too fast sometimes), you’ll be notified of the suspected error and offered a Spell Checker to view suggested fixes. Ignore or Change the misspelling, then click Done when ready. This will make your questions and answers look bright for sure!

We’ll also warn you if your Caps Lock key is on. As you know, typing in all-caps in the Internet world is often perceived as shouting and regarded as bad netiquette.

These are just a few of the tips we have for you. Discover them all and really make your Answers shine!

For the experts among us who feel as though they don’t need any help, the tips can easily be closed. Click the “x” in the top right-hand corner of the speech bubble, and they’ll disappear.

Don’t forget to leave your comments about these

tips — we love hearing from you!

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Photo by Dano

I’m going camping this weekend for the first time since moving to New York City five years ago, and despite having camped many times in my life, I’m a little anxious. When I lived in Northern California, I frequently had the opportunity to enjoy the open wilderness with friends. But here in the big city, fewer people are up for weekend trips to the country — at least those which involve backpacks, tents, and a dearth of food-delivery options.

I will be the most experienced camper in this weekend’s group, and I’m pretty rusty. Since my journey into the woods has me both excited and scared (any Sondheim fans?), I thought I’d hike through the Camping category in Answers to gear up for the weekend.

I found some great lists of important items I shouldn’tforget — obvious things like a tent, sleeping bag, and flashlight, as well as things that I probably would have neglected to bring: extra batteries, first-aid supplies, and toilet paper (oops!).

As far as food is concerned, we are bringing a small cooler and some rudimentary cooking equipment, so that widely expands our sustenance possibilities. And I found some delicious recommendations on food items to bring along. Is there anything better than bacon and freshly scrambled eggs after sleeping in the great outdoors?

I also found terrific advice on where to pitch a tent, what to do should it rain, and creative ways to deal with bugs and bears.

What am I forgetting? Do you have any advice for this city boy heading to the country? What tips do you have for a safe and enjoyable camping trip?

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I have a love-hate relationship with clichés. I know they should be avoided, um, like the plague, but I can’t resist researching how they start. The other day, while walking through a bookstore, I got to wondering about one of the most famous cliché in all of literature — “It was a dark and stormy night.” Who in the heck came up with this?

I did a general search on the term and found a variety of sites on the subject. Happily, the first result answered all my questions. An author named Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase in his 1830 novel, “Paul Clifford.” The novel tells the story of the titular character, a man who “leads a duel life as a criminal and upscale gentleman.”

According to Wikipedia, the book was well-received when it was published, but was largely forgotten over the years. That changed in 1965, when Charles M. Schulz used the phrase in a Peanuts comic strip. In the strip, Snoopy is struggling to begin a novel, and finally settles on starting with the infamous phrase.

While the sentence isn’t really an example of bad writing, it has come to be the poster phrase for an annual contest sponsored by San Jose State University’s English Department. The contest is to write the most deliberately awful prose. Past winners include this sentence by Jim Guigli of Carmichael, California: Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

One blog on creative writing points out that the phrase “dark and stormy night” isn’t really a “bad sentence” but it is redundant. True enough. Unless you’re at the North Pole, nighttime is always dark, right?

Do you guys have favorite clichés that you can’t resist saying? Do you admonish your friends and family for using them or do you, to use a well-worn cliché, live and let live? Leave me a note below and let me know. Until then, I shall wait with baited breath.

Thanks for reading,

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Thanks for your considerable participation and the passion you’ve demonstrated in your questions.

Due to unexpected last-minute events, we were unable to get Christian Bale’s answer to your questions and would like to apologize.

Because we don’t like to let you down, we’d like to share the full interview of co-stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart with you. See what they have to say about the Dark Knight right here:

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Here’s another round of interesting and fun questions and answers we’ve recently featured in the Best of Answers module:

I need ideas for a sack lunch that do not require refrigeration. With the cost of food soaring, packing a lunch at home is becoming more common. So it never hurts to have a few lunch ideas on reserve. The great, detailed Best Answer by maxin_96 offers more tips than the standard PB&J and will help you add variety to your brown-bag lunch.

Is it bad to open multiple savings accounts? Keeping our credit in good standing is something most of us want. Answerer vilkri provides good advice about savings accounts.

What is the most endangered animal in the world? It’s always sad when you hear about another animal that’s become threatened, endangered, or, especially, extinct. Boogie provides an eye-opening answer with quotes and a link that helps readers understand more about endangered animals.

Hopefully your knowledge has increased as a result of these featured questions–and all the others we highlight in the Best of Answers module.

Editors spend countless hours going through the Q&A on Answers to highlight some of the top, but with the amount of content added every minute, it’s impossible for us to catch all the great questions and answers the community comes up with. If you’ve seen a question that you think should be featured, please send it to y_answrs_editors@yahoo.com. Please enter “Possible Featured Question” in the subject line and include the question URL in the email. This will help us sift through the many emails we receive and find the question more easily.

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