 How to Fix This? from English Master. This video will tell you the mistakes you are making with how-to in English, how to recognize them, and how to fix them. The video is designed especially for teachers and students of English as a second language. Okay, let's get started. First of all, how-to is not a question. It is an answer. For example, how to fix a leaky faucet question mark. This is wrong. How do you fix a leaky faucet? This is a correct question. How to fix a leaky faucet colon dot dot. This is an answer or a set of instructions. You will expect to see something like this. Step one, step two, step three. So how do you fix this problem? There are several ways. One, make a real question. Two, use it as a title or subtitle for instructions. Three, use it as a title or subtitle in descriptions. Four, change the wording in sentences. Number one, real questions. How to fix this question mark. Incorrect. The correct way is how do you fix this? This is the most common way of doing it. It's a general question. Also, it's like a conversation. I'm asking you directly for help and we're going to talk about it. The next one is how do I fix this? This is focusing on my efforts as a learner. Next, how do other people fix this? This is describing how others do it. Last, how does he or she fix this? This is describing one person's methods. This is the least common. Number two, instructions in titles or subtitles. How to play chess question mark. This is incorrect. Instead, for a title or subtitle, you can write how to play chess. Use headline phrasing. How to make tacos. How to ride a bicycle. Notice there is no question mark at the end of the phrase. Titles and subtitles often appear in bold and are separated vertically from the main paragraph or set of instructions. Let's look at some examples. The title here is how to be a better parent. It's written in bold at the top and it's separated from the rest of the article or the following paragraph or paragraphs. Note, for titles, the main words are often capitalized. The main words are words like nouns, verbs, adjectives. So you see how it says how, be, better, parent. But we don't capitalize to and up. Words like articles, prepositions, and so on. And the first word of the title is always capitalized. Here's a variation in subtitles. How to bake a blueberry pie. Because in this case, it's underlined and only the first word of the phrase is capitalized. And here, a set of instructions is following. Notice the difference in spacing and capitalization. We'll talk about those later. Number three, descriptive titles or subtitles. For example, how leaders deal with challenges. They're not talking about how you do something. They're talking about how other people do things. They're describing what other people do. Usually, you see these written in the plural. How leaders deal with challenges. The bold text and also the capitalizations are very similar here. Next, a variation in this would be when you're talking about just one person. How a great leader deals with challenges. So instead of how leaders deal with challenges, how a leader deals with challenges. What's the difference between instructions and descriptions in titles? Well, instructions provide a list of steps for you to follow. For example, how to fix a dead battery. First, you do this. Next, you do that. Then, you do something else. Descriptions, on the other hand, tell how someone else does the procedure. For example, how mechanics fix dead batteries. This is how they do it. First, they do this. Next, they do that. Then, they do something else. Variations in format. You'll see different variations in format of titles and subtitles. So for example, here you see the subtitle at the top of the paragraph, separated by a period. And the subtitle is underlined. There are many ways of doing this. What we suggest is that you check your style manual or ask your instructor for his or her preferences, if you're submitting a paper like this. Four, incorporating how to in sentences. Sometimes you might want to include a how to phrase in a larger sentence. For example, I know how to play the guitar. Or Bob knows how to play the guitar. Do you know how to play the guitar? This is a correct question, incorporating the how to phrase. Be careful in moving the phrase to the beginning of the sentence. For example, how to play the guitar well requires hours of practice. This is very wordy, and it sounds a little bit strange. Instead, you can say something like this. Playing the guitar well requires hours of practice. This is much better. So we can change the how to phrase to simply verb ing at the beginning of a sentence. Why do we sometimes see these types of expressions written as questions? For example, you might see something like this. How to build a fighting cabinet. Or what to do. Who knows? Maybe the writers don't know it's incorrect. Native speakers can sometimes be wrong, too. Maybe they're trying to be funny. Or creative. Or just save space. The important thing is that you know the correct way of doing it, so that you don't make these kinds of mistakes in your own writing. Hope that was helpful. If you enjoyed or learned from this video, please give us a thumbs up in the comments section below. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching. If you have a question, please submit it at the link below. And check out our websites.