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No question

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An editor told me this week to not write questions in a feature and I overreacted. Not at all because I disagree, but because I was appalled at the idea I would ever do this dreadful thing. I explained that questions in feature articles were a pet peeve of mine and then decided no, that’s not strong enough, it’s a pet peeve, a hobby horse and a religious tract.

I feel so strongly about this that it is honestly difficult for me to write you an example. Honestly. But here goes.

So what is a question in a feature?

God, the willpower required to not delete that before you saw it.

A question like that in an article comes loaded with a lot of information and all of it is bad. When you read a question, you know the feature is moving on to a new point, which is fine –– but you also know the writer didn’t know how to do the move. You can suspect that the writer is lazy and you can know for a fact that the writer isn’t very good.

If an article isn’t one of those bullet-point lists, a listicle in which number 6 will blow your mind, then it’s known as a read-through. You’re meant to read it through from the start to the end. That means the text starts somewhere and the writer takes you through to the end.

Each point has to follow on from the one before. The piece has a whole has a lot to say and the job is to say it all in such a way that the article flows, that it carries the reader along without any bumps in the stream. The job is finding the right sequence of points and making it seem inevitable, obvious, easy that they go in this order.

You also have to write well enough that someone bothers to read on, but that’s another story. The reason poor writers include questions in their text is because they can’t take you to the next point in a way that feels inevitable, obvious, easy.

When I read a question, it feels to me as if the article has stopped in a panic. I can see the writer, I can feel the writer, realising they don’t know how to keep the text going. I can feel the weight of the word count on their backs, the pressure of the deadline. I can feel that they don’t read much. And I can sense that they don’t give very much of a damn, either.

A question in an article is a brick wall and if I ever read on after one, it’s because I have to for some reason. I then resent having to, because I already know the writer isn’t any good and so the chance I’ll find what I need is suddenly dramatically lower.

Don’t get me started on questions in headlines, either. Actually, no, do get me started on that because it’s quick. So quick that there’s even Betteridge’s law which states that any headline that’s a question will be followed by an article that answers no.

“Can you declutter in one hour?”

“Is Elvis really teaching PE in Cardiff?”

It’s possible, just about barely possible, that you’ve picked up on how questions in articles and headlines make me a teeny bit unhappy. I told you I overreacted. But I can’t help it: when I see a question in a feature, I am affronted that I’ve been wasting my time reading this crap. So to be told not to do it, and by implication have it suggested that I ever do, it was pet peeve hobby horse religious effigy burning time. And then some.

He said, she said, they locked down

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Okay, I was writing a text last night and absolutely the correct pronoun to use for a particular person was “they”. You had to be there. But if you had been, you’d have written “they” as well. And I have not one single problem with it.

But I do have a question.

For some reason, and who knows why, this time when I wrote the word, it made me wonder why we ever had “he” or “she”. Seriously. When is it actually necessary, I mean necessary, to specify someone’s gender? When has it ever been?

I mean, I long to give you an example of a time when it was considered necessary yet clearly wasn’t, but I can’t even pull that off.

This may just be on my mind because one of the things I’m doing during this coronavirus lockdown is that I’m learning French through Duolingo. And it’s killing me trying to fathom out gender. I’m concocting conspiracy theories about why it’s le stylo for a pen but la lettre for a letter. Why apples are female but vegetables are male.

Look, don’t press me on the precision here, I’m learning. Plus my only relief on these daily lessons is the remarkable number of times that the app asks me the correct gender for a taxi. Thank you Vanessa Paradis.

Not true. I also got some relief when I realised the real reason that I avoid beaches like la plage. Or that on the odd occasion I attempt dieting, toast and sandwiches are the first to go, as hard as that is. Bread is pain, after all.

What do you mean, my mind is wandering off into apparently and actually completely unconnected subjects?

Yesterday, for instance, I was one of many people recording a video message as part of the Royal Television Society’s coronavirus products. And I thought about it a lot because I didn’t know what I could say and I didn’t know who would particularly choose to listen anyway.

But then this see-saw, up and down, wandering yet focused lockdown mind of mine noticed that I was saying something I rather liked.

People will always remember what we did during this lockdown, I said, but he or she will also remember what we can do.