Child suicides in Japan hit record high

Re:Child suicides in Japan hit record high by weberer on Thursday October 14, 2021 @11:35AM (#28865739)

I'm a native English speaker and this trend confuses me pretty often. It's not always clear whether the person:

1. is sincerely asking a question

2. accidentally hit they question mark key instead of the period

3. is mimicking the valley girl inflection

It's not that much of a problem here, but it's much more pronounced in places where people rarely use complete sentences to begin with. Such as chat rooms, etc.

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Re:Child suicides in Japan hit record high by reddit_clone on Thursday October 14, 2021 @03:09PM (#28868604)

> is mimicking the valley girl inflection

:-) I was thinking this but couldn't find the right phrase.

It could also be expressing uncertainty. You want to make an assertion but not 100% sure you are right. A question mark at the end expresses some self doubt and leaves it open to correction. I use '?' that way quite often.

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