There is an insidious, creeping virus attacking the spoken language. Everything, no matter how matter-of-fact or certain has become a question. If you haven’t noticed it yet, sit quietly in a public place and listen to the voices flow around you. Barring that, the television will do, especially, but not by any means limited to, reality shows of any kind. It doesn’t have to be the dramatized type of reality show, like Jersey Shore. Watch a cooking show — anything where real people are speaking in their own words.

Everything is a question. I went to the grocery store? And the tomatoes I always get? They were on sale for half off? So I bought twice as much? And now I have to make something with them before they go bad.

That last part of the sentence didn’t have a question mark on it because I couldn’t bear to put it there. I’d already driven myself nuts. But in extreme situations, it could be there. It’s gotten that bad out there.

I used to think it was a generational thing, that only teenagers were doing it. But that’s not so. People my age do it, too. Hell, I probably do it sometimes.

I critiqued a manuscript awhile  back for someone. It was a young adult novel, though the author was older. Question marks were spattered freely throughout the dialogue in the most puzzling places. I hacked through them because my main concern was grammatical integrity. But it got me to thinking. As a writer, how does one convey this crazy speech inflection? Should the question marks remain? Should it be described once as a character trait and then left to the reader to fill it in? What if all your characters speak that way? Should it be assumed that the reader, if within a certain age group, is going to automatically hear it in her head anyway? It was a fantasy novel, not a contemporary one, so I advised her to lose the grammatically incorrect question marks.

While I personally believe this pattern of inflection is new — within maybe the last five to ten years — I’m not so sure the idea is new. It’s always been there, just in different forms.

When I lived in England, they sometimes punctuated a sentence with “didn’t I?” It puzzled me: “I was having the worst day, and on top of it all, I got a flat tire, didn’t I?” How would I know? You just told me the story.

Or try this: “I turned in my homework a day late, right? And she marked off a full grade!”

Wisconsin: “You shouldn’t talk to strangers, don’t cha know?”

And these: “I came home from a hard day at work, ya? And my wife was mad as hell because I was ten minutes late.” “It really pissed me off, you know?”

We humans are fragile beings. When we speak, we need to know others are listening. Each of those insertions is a request for some sort of confirmation that the other person is not only listening, but understanding the words and emotions of the speaker. A nod, a grunt, a change of expression are appropriate responses.

The question thing, when overdone irritates the crap out of me. And I honestly have no idea how to punctuate it if someone speaking that way creeps into my work. However, knowing why people do it not only fascinates me from a psychological standpoint, it also makes me more patient as a listener.

You know what I mean?