Learn English – When is it appropriate to end a question without a question mark

punctuationquestion markquestions

Basically, if I ask a rhetorical question, it's not really prompting for an answer. Does that mean it should not end in a question mark?

Here are two examples:

  • "What's New" used as a title for a section.
  • "Who wants to reinvent the wheel." This is meant to be rhetorical, so is a question mark correct?

Best Answer

The "What's new" example you provided is not necessarily a question, it can be a statement as it was something like "Here you can find what is new", so it doesn't obviously need a question mark. Of course you can also name the section (of a site, for example) as "What's new?" and in that case it's legit to use the question mark.

Regarding Rhetorical questions, they would need the question mark because they are questions. Still, the page that I linked explains that they can be followed also by a full stop or an exclamation mark, depending on the context where they are being used.

See for example:

  • Wasn't that game incredible!
  • Why are you so stupid?
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