I’ve seen a number of posts lately like “How to get yadda yadda yadda” but when you click, the content is actually a question about the subject line, which sucks.
If you’re posting a question, please make it look like a question. It’s EASY… Just put a QUESTION MARK at the end of your subject line. It looks like this:
?
We’re pirates here, not fucking savages.
Keelhaul the offenders, oh Black Pharaoh¡
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow¡¿
Iä!
They prolly don’t use turn signals either. Anarchists!
You just made me hate them.
That seems a bit unfair to anarchists.
If you’re posting a question please get to know this tricky little guy: ?
I’m sorry, but I can’t understand your question???
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone uses multiple question marks at the end of a statement. I’m triggered right now and reporting you for harassment. Lol
So it works as intended
It’s a fair cop.
The crawling chaos has spoken!
I’m glad someone enjoyed the reference. :)
Imagine how it must feel to be this tricky little guy: ,
Arrrr, I’m here t’ make replicas o’ all yer punctuation!
Avast, wher’ be th’ interrobang!?
Seriously though, while this post is cute, let’s remember not everyone speaks English as a first language, and while many languages do use the English Alphabet, many do not and so there are still quite a few people unfamiliar with the proper English punctuation.
That’s great and all, but for those of us that do speak English and are expecting certain grammatical norms, eschewing those norms, regardless of the validity of the reason, makes it significantly harder for us to parse.
The question mark is not a rare piece of punctuation, either. It’s used in China. It’s used in Japan. It’s used in Vietnamese, every Romance language I’ve ever encountered, and every Germanic language I’ve ever encountered. I’m not saying I understand all those languages, but I can certainly recognize when someone’s asking a question in one because the question mark remains the same.
This is a piss-poor excuse and reeks of the attitude of one who’s never encountered a language that doesn’t use the Latin Alphabet even in passing. Oh yeah, by the way, it’s called the Latin Alphabet, not the English Alphabet.
Not to invalidate the point made, but…
While Japanese indeed uses question marks, you can get screwed if you think that every sentence without a question mark at the end is not a question. For example, this is a grammatically correct question:
それは質問ですか。
for real… the か character I would even go so far as to claim is often MORE prevalent without the question mark.
That’s reasonable. I pulled that info from Wikipedia, and I don’t speak Japanese, so I just was going off that.
I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Isn’t that an argument for the existence of this post? Many don’t know this, well, now they do.
I can forgive the incorrect “How to get blah?” sentence formation, but leaving out a question mark (which are common across many languages) makes it look like purposeful clickbait.
I cannot forgive that. English is not a language that allows you to turn a statement into a question just by changing punctuation. This is covered in like day one: “What is your name?”
If you learned English through media and not formal classes, you have even less excuse, because then you should be learning how people talk in the real world, not just formal classroom English.
It’s actually pretty common to change a sentence into a question with rising intonation in speech, which is pretty much just adding a question mark.
“Fries.” is a statement of what something is or what someone wants. “Fries?” is asking if someone wants fries.
“I said that.” is a statement about something someone said. “I said that?” is a question about whether they said something.
Of course, we could add emphasis to any of those three words and end up with 3 different questions.
“I said that?” … No, I guess it was your partner, not you.
“I said that?” … Well, you sure IMPLIED it!
“I said that?” … Yes, verbatim. It’s even in the video from last night.
All from changing a “.” to a “?” in the sentence “I said that.”.
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Yep, non native speakers get the punctuation right every time. Native speakers whose education system is in the toilet are the real perpetrators 😂
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Oh, yeah? I’ll show you! How to punctuation.
Is it here‽
You must be rich. 😏
Are there any languages that don’t have punctuations?
I mean, most languages are not written.
interrobang
…
writes banginterrogative symbol
