I Don't Like This?

Any statement can be a question. When speaking, you just inflect upward. When writing, you just slap a question mark at the end, which implies an upward vocal inflection. So it's, like, Valley girl talk?

Still, question marks like the one after "10am" in this Web posting annoy me. My guess is that the writer didn't really intend to imply an upward inflection. She certainly wasn't asking whether Erica says that. The writer used the question mark only to make clear that she wanted an answer. It's like putting a question mark after "Guess what."

And, considering how unreasonably peevish I am about that, we probably shouldn't get into the topic of people who seek definitive answers about McDonald's hours not from McDonald's but a from a friend named Erica then seek confirmation from faceless strangers.