Andrew Vine: Let’s put a full stop to this questionable habit

Yes, it’s that modern epidemic that blights more and more of our everyday conversations – the question that isn’t really a question, the statement that is rendered querulous and positively absurd by the hugely annoying use of a rising inflection at the end.

It’s at the very top of the league table of infuriating verbal tics, way out in front of the needless addition of “like” or “you know” to sentences, and even outstripping the preposterous habit of people referring to each other – irrespective of gender – as “Man”.

It’s spreading with the tenacity of green algae on ponds in the summertime. And just as algae chokes the life out of water, so this strangles proper conversations.

In the queue at the supermarket the other day, a young woman unwittingly demonstrated how bizarre it has rendered normal, pleasant back-and-forth as she chatted to her friend.

“Emma’s getting married next month? I’m so looking forward to it? We all went round to see her dress last week? She’s going to look amazing? Sophie’s doing her hair?”

On and on it went, Emma’s big day reduced to a Kafka-esque litany of endless questions to which there were no answers. It’s to be hoped the bride and groom don’t talk like this as well, or it’s going to make for a most peculiar service in which the vows are going to have an air of uncertainty about them. “With this ring I thee wed? To have and to hold? In sickness and in health?”

How ludicrous it makes the speaker sound is obvious if the rising inflection is applied to any great oration, or passage from literature. There’s almost a parlour game in it – who can render mighty words the most ridiculous by turning them into a question?

Churchill would have provoked giggles instead of resolve if he had told the Commons in 1940: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat?”

Nobody would have bothered to record for posterity Sir Edward Grey’s grave musing on the cataclysm about to engulf millions on the eve of war in 1914 if he’d said: “The lamps are going out all over Europe? We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime?”

And Richard III would be about as dramatically powerful as Norman Wisdom if in the moments before his death, he roared in desperation: “A horse? A horse? My kingdom for a horse?”

The academics have a name for it of course, based on where they think it originated. It’s referred to as “Australian Question Intonation” or “Australian Intonation Disease”, which demonstrates that our cousins Down Under have more methods of torment up their sleeves than just trouncing us at cricket, although there are those who believe that the rising intonation has its origins in either New Zealand or the United States.

Wherever it came from, there’s a term for it from another source. It comes from comedian Rory McGrath – a stickler for proper use of language – who memorably called it the “moronic interrogative”.

He’s right. One of the most irritating aspects of getting ensnared in conversation with a relentless questioner is the implication that one is having trouble grasping what is being said. It’s like a parent talking very slowly and carefully to a child about the need to be careful crossing the road, stopping and asking questions to make sure their message is getting through.

In the face of every sentence becoming a question, I have to fight off the impulse to say: “I understand perfectly well what you’re saying, so please stop addressing me like I’m an idiot.”

Now it turns out that this manner of speaking places a question mark over the future of those infected by this verbal virus. A new survey of 700 senior managers in the world of business found that the relentless questioners were less likely to land a top job and the good salary that goes with it.

That’s because the managers were of the opinion that it indicated a person’s need to constantly seek approval and a reluctance to speak their mind – both traits that block a path to senior roles and higher earnings.

There is something else they could have added. The constantly rising inflection adds a whiny, wheedling tone to whatever is being said, which grates on the nerves and potentially creates a totally false impression of what the relentless questioner is really like.

There are lots of perfectly nice people out there getting on the nerves of others and preventing themselves from being taken seriously.

Time to stamp it out? Time for those unfortunate sufferers to catch themselves doing it and just stop? Time to bring back the full stop and leave the question mark where it belongs? Three real questions, and not statements with rising intonations, to which there is one answer. Yes, please.