What to include when your question involves a chromatogram — one year on posts 61–76

Number your questions if there is more than one. It sounds fussy. It means the answer can be numbered back, and you find out which one nobody addressed.

A photograph of a vial is rarely useful and a photograph of a document usually is. Redact the identifiers before you post either.

Post #60 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.

Five questions in one post gets you one answer: the easiest one, usually not the one you needed most. Post them separately or pick the one that depends on the others least and ask that one first.

One more caveat and then I will stop qualifying: the sample selected itself.

Where I part company with post #62, and it is a narrow parting.

If the answer you got does not fit your case, say which part does not fit rather than restating the question. Otherwise the next reply is the same as the last one.

I would want the raw data before agreeing with my own summary of it.

Picking up post #64: that is the part I would want checked first.

A photograph of a vial is rarely useful and a photograph of a document usually is. Redact the identifiers before you post either.

Speaking for myself and not for anyone else who has posted here.

Chromatogram questions: describe the method first. Column type, gradient, wavelength, detection method. Everything else follows from method. A chromatogram without method is a number without context.

Speaking as somebody who asked badly last month and got a polite request for four missing details: writing the question properly the first time takes ten minutes and saves two days. Learn from me.

Written in the hope of being told what I have missed.

Noted, and thank you for writing it out rather than summarising it.

Disagreeing with an answer you got: cite what you disagree with, say what contradicts it, and ask which one holds. Do not open with "I think you are wrong". Lead with the evidence.

I would put this at better than even and not much better.

Worth separating two things that post #66 runs together.

A question about somebody else's post should be a reply to that post, not a new topic. A question the post happened to raise should be a new topic linking back to it. The difference is whether the answer is useful without the original.

A weak preference rather than a position.

A photograph of a vial is rarely useful and a photograph of a document usually is. Redact the identifiers before you post either.

This follows post #69 rather than contradicting it.

It is fine to say you cannot explain why you are asking. Nobody will press, and the technical part of the question can usually be answered without the context.

I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this.

Asking a follow-up: new topic or reply in the old one? If the answer depends on the previous post, reply. If it is a question that makes sense without the previous post, new topic. The second gets faster answers.

The confident version of this sentence would be wrong, so here is the hedged one.

"Has anyone had this happen" gets you anecdotes. "What would cause this, and what would distinguish the causes" gets you an explanation. The second question is almost always the one you wanted.