What’s the deal with rhetorical questions? Read on for the answer (and additional pointless thoughts)

Life is filled with many great questions, such as “Why are we here?”, “Where is the restroom?” and “Can I really put three question marks in one sentence?”

I may not have the answers to all of those questions, but I do have some important information to share with you today.

First of all, we are here to read this column, which will bring together a collection of questions, comments and commas in order to best serve you, the reader.

Here then, for your consideration, are a few:

What do you think of rhetorical questions? A rhetorical question is one that implies its own answer, and the answer that it implies is either no answer at all or is an obvious answer, according to the definitions I read. Basically, rhetorical questions are made to make a point and are often rather annoying, especially if you’re not sure if you are supposed to answer them or not.

Is anything more annoying than a confusing rhetorical question? Whose idea was this anyway? How many of these are too many? How do I stop? What in the world? Isn’t this fun?

I would prefer if rhetorical answers were more popular. I looked up a few websites that suggested rhetorical answers are answers that imply a certain question.

If I understand this correctly, then I now see that my son was ahead of his time when he was in elementary school and would often say, “I like Canada,” for no particular reason. I can only assume now that he was providing a rhetorical answer to an implied question about his thoughts on Canada.

“The restroom is down the hall to the left,” is also a good rhetorical answer when someone enters your home (as long as the restroom is actually down the hall and to the left).

I would like to see more rhetorical exclamations. For no apparent reason, you can just blurt out “Wow!” and that implies that something big has happened. Or you could try, “That’s a big doughnut!” at a random time and it would also suffice.

I often wonder about rhetorical ellipses… Do you think they are even…

Now then, on to other important questions:

If you can wear an undershirt, shirt and overcoat, why can’t you wear underpants, pants and overpants? This brings up an question that has perplexed me for many years. In the winter, I will wear a shirt, sweater and then put on a coat, but I still just wear the same pants that I wear in the summer. Doesn’t it seem like we should wear more pants in the winter? Why are the legs being taken for granted in cold weather?

Why would anyone ever be carrying a needle near a haystack anyway? Are people sewing while sitting in a pile of hay? I used to play in barns all the time when I was younger, and we never carried needles in there. My brother did lose a glasses lens in a bunch of straw one time, though. I can definitely state that it was difficult to find. Our parents were not happy.

If I ordered a chicken book and an egg book online on the same day, which would come first?

12- Is that a good rhetorical answer? It implies a math problem or a perhaps question about how many months there are in a year.

If I don’t like being sad, does that mean I’m not a mourning person?

If you think that your friend Mark has poor penmanship, is it fair to question Mark’s questions marks? – I got three in a sentence right there! I guess I did have all of the answers to those initial questions after all.

What new tricks are there to teach an old dog anyway? Sit, stay, roll over and shake seem to be the standard tricks.

Rhetorical sentence fragments.

Does it bother anyone else that ice cubes are rarely actually in the shape of a cube? I can see referring to them as ice rectangles or ice quadrilaterals, but even then it’s a stretch with many of the popular chunks of ice. They don’t seem to be close to actual cubes these days.

What about a rhetorical poem? Does anyone really know ’em?

Wouldn’t you consider them to be sublime? Especially if they imply a certain __________.