Should rhetorical questions have question marks?
Where is Tal BTW?
Yes.
And here, just a little less often.
I found this on the tinternet.
PS- I have no idea who Aaron is
Rhetorical Questions
You’ve probably heard rhetorical questions more often than you realize. You start a sentence with a negative word when you mean something positive. So “Wasn’t that movie great?” means that you think the movie was great. It seems counterintuitive, but that’s the way English works. It’s called a rhetorical question, and it can end in either a question mark or an exclamation point, and in dialogue you can sometimes even have a speaker’s rhetorical question end in a period (1).
Another example of a rhetorical question is “Isn’t she leaving?” That question means you think the woman is leaving, but you want to confirm. Rhetorical questions like this take a negative form. If you make the “Isn’t she leaving?” question positive, it becomes just a regular question: “Is she leaving?” If you ask "Is she leaving?" you don’t know the answer; whereas with the rhetorical question “Isn’t she leaving?” you are assuming she is leaving.
Rhetorical questions have popped up in pop music. Stevie Wonder, for example, wrote a famous song called “Isn’t She Lovely,” whose lyrics begin:
“Isn't she lovely,
Isn't she wonderful,
Isn't she precious,” (2)
Mr. Wonder definitely thinks the girl is lovely, wonderful, and precious. No question about that.
These kinds of rhetorical questions seem to be quite conversational. You wouldn’t want to write, “Aren’t I the perfect person for this job?” in a job cover letter, nor would you want to say, “Isn’t it obvious that you should hire me?” in an interview. There are better ways to sound more qualified and more professional. So, Aaron: no, it’s not advisable to use this kind of construction in formal situations.
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