Assume v. Presume

Trev said:
Use a hammer for putting screws in, and a screwdriver for taking them out is the proper way.
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Not really. Use a 🔨 to bash the end of the screwdriver (in lieu of a chisel) to prise up the screw (or damage the wood, if screw is in wood). Then use claw end of hammer to lever the screw out. (Oh dear! Back to leverage again :D )
 
Putting a question mark at the end of a sentence (that would otherwise read as a statement) is not sufficient to turn the sentence into a question!
 
Canadians have a rising inflection too. Confused the hell out of me until I realised they were not constantly looking for approval.
 
Does not a question mark indicate a question then? All my life I have been under that misapprehension. Can I ask a question with a colon as a sentence terminator then:
 
Trev said:
Does not a question mark indicate a question then?
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Obviously it indicates a question, but then the reader has to find a question within the sentence instead of having to guess what the question might be. There is a rash of posts on this forum and others that say something like (I paraphrase):

"My HDR-FOX appears to be broken?"

That's a statement with a superfluous question mark, and we are requested to assume the poster wants an answer to the problem (with invariably too little information to give one).
 
Oh! By the way, an exclamation mark usually comes after a short exclamation, not a long sentence. #3963 refers.

It's a test BH, to see if anyone can realise that there is a question lurking somewhere in the statement so as to provoke the reader into asking for more details in order that aforesaid reader can have a wild stab at answering the implied question without the aid of a crystal ball, Tarot cards or tea leaves. You can breathe now.
 
That's a novel idea, grammatically. I like Trev's suggestion of it being used to indicate puzzlement, but (to me) it is incongruous.
 
One alternative form which I use for tentative calendar entries is to put the question mark at the front

"?FEB and pint with mates"
 
gomezz said:
But it can be used to indicate some uncertainty in the validity of the statement being made?
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I have scraps of paper all over the place with question marks at the end of statements for exactly that reason. Not sure that I would use them in a more formal environment? :D:p
 
Ezra Pound said:
It didn't quite make it into ascii, but it is in unicode,
BTW
I couldn't bring myself to use it's name as I'm not keen on Americanisms
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If it's the only name for it, how can it be an Americanism? I presume you mean the interrobang; I have it available on the iPad: ‽︎
 
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