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Stack Exchange guide to using tags
How to format tags
- Use all lower case
- Replace spaces with hyphens (-) to combine multiple words into a single word (e.g., tag "unit testing" as
unit-testing
) - Avoid punctuation (which can make it difficult to use the tag in a URL)
- When naming a tag, think about how someone would search for that subject. In most cases this means typing out the full name, but you may also want to use the abbreviation. For example,
[css]
is probably more appropriate than[cascading-style-sheets]
Re-tagging
As part of the editing process, users may suggest edits or directly edit the tags of a question if they feel a certain tag was used inappropriately or that the question is missing a tag.
You should re-tag questions when:
- You are adding valuable information to the question by doing so
- You are replacing obscure or difficult to understand tags with well-known and popular tags that are appropriate for the question.
Avoid meta-tags
Do not use meta-tags in questions. Here are some tips to help you determine whether a tag is a meta-tag:
- If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like
[beginner]
,[subjective]
, and[best-practices]
, are not helpful by themselves – they do not communicate anything about the content of the question. - If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag. For example, the meaning of the tag
[subjective]
is, itself, subjective; the same is true for tags like[best-practices]
and[beginner]
. Best practices to whom? Beginner by what criteria? Use only tags that have a broadly accepted, objective definition.
References
- Stack Overflow - What are tags, and how should I use them?
- Stack Overflow - How do I ask a good question?
- Meta Stack Exchange - What does it mean to burninate a tag?
- Meta Stack Exchange - A real solution for ambiguous tags
- Meta Stack Exchange - Creating tags
- Meta Stack Exchange - How do I correctly tag my questions?