Question: I would like to display something like this: `SampleUser poked you.` in a `UIAlertView`'s `message`, but actually i'm getting errors. I know how to do it with a simple string, i don't know how to do it with a string that contains another string. 

```
UIAlertView *alertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Poke" message:@"%@ poked you.", self.senderString delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"Yes" otherButtonTitles:@"No", nil];
[alertView show];

```

Answer: 
The problem here is that for the `message:` argument, you're attempting to send this:

```
@"%@ poked you.", userName

```

This doesn't make any sense.

Instead, you need to send an `NSString` object as the argument.

```
NSString *message = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ poked you.", self.senderString];

```

Now that we've created an `NSString` object, we can use this object as the message argument.

You could create this object embedded in the call to create the alert view, but for readability and debugging , it's better to do it this way.

```
NSString *message = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ poked you.", self.senderString];
UIAlertView *pokeAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Poke" 
                                                    message:message 
                                                   delegate:self
                                          cancelButtonTitle:@"Yes" 
                                          otherButtonTitles:@"No", nil];
[pokeAlert show];

```
You should create your composed-`NSString` first and then call it in your `UIAlertView`:

```
NSString *message = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ poked you.", userName];
UIAlertView *alertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Poke" message:message, self.senderString delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"Yes" otherButtonTitles:@"No", nil];
[alertView show]; 

```