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If you're posting a question please get to know this tricky little guy: ? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[-] [email protected] 45 points 4 months ago

Keelhaul the offenders, oh Black Pharaoh¡

[-] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow¡¿

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Iä!

[-] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago

If you're posting a question please get to know this tricky little guy: ?

I'm sorry, but I can't understand your question????

[-] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

It's a fair cop.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

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

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

So it works as intended

[-] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago

The crawling chaos has spoken!

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I'm glad someone enjoyed the reference. :)

[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

So what did you think of the game .

[-] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Diabolical?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

gasp

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I can't believe you've done this.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I just lost The Game?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

What did you think of the game:

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Imagine how it must feel to be this tricky little guy: ,

[+] [email protected] -17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 48 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

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。

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

for real... the か character I would even go so far as to claim is often MORE prevalent without the question mark.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

That's reasonable. I pulled that info from Wikipedia, and I don't speak Japanese, so I just was going off that.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago

Isn't that an argument for the existence of this post? Many don't know this, well, now they do.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

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.".

[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

My (non-english) native language uses the question mark, but many don't use it out of lazyness. I don't think this is a local issue. Also, are there really that many languages that do not use a question mark? I would have thought that is the rarity.

Besides, most english content I read on lemmy are not nearly that bad to justify that.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Fun fact: In Greek the question mark is ";".

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

¿Whaaat?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

¿Eres tu, Ramón?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

If programming memes have taught me anything, this one is that :D

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I have to admit that I would have never imagined it's a different character than the semicolon if I hadn't seen those. That's bad optimization right there!

Interesting additional info: in Greek, the role of the semicolon is played by a floating period ·

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Somebody needs to get on deduplicating UTF8 ASAP

[-] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

there are still quite a few people unfamiliar with the proper English punctuation.

The irony of this coming from an American. You guys are so clueless.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Yep, non native speakers get the punctuation right every time. Native speakers whose education system is in the toilet are the real perpetrators 😂

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Actually my point was that Americans don't always use "proper English punctuation" since they co-opted the language and then randomly changed a bunch of things for absolutely no reason.