Guess what guest-mudgeon
Bruce Yanoshek is bothered by.
One punctuation problem that bothers me is the phrase "Guess what?". This is
not a question, but a command or request (imperative sentence for you grammarians), and so should not have a question mark. If you say it, you can
observe that your voice doesn't go up at the end like a question, yet it is
almost always written with a question mark. I'm sure that people do that because "what" is a question word, yet it isn't at all common to see "Tell
me why" or "Show me how" with a question mark.
Oooh, that one gets our
goat[s], too! However, one's voice doesn't necessarily rise at the end of a
question. "Where were you last night?" sounds quite
unnatural with a rising tone at the end. However, "Guess what" is indeed
a command.
The other side of the coin
is an error that occurs with "would", as in "Would you hand
me that pencil?" A question is being asked here, and a question
mark is proper, though many people use only a period, even in business
letters and other formal writing!
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