To Use or Not to Use Rhetorical Questions?

Such questions are everywhere, but not everyone loves them!

Photo by Josh Mills on Unsplash

Whether in copywriting or content writing, questions can help audiences interact with what they read.

After all, that’s why people read, to interact and resonate with words, not just for the sake of reading.

So, asking questions would typically allow you to engage with your readers, keep them on the page, lure them into reading your next sentence, and the next one, and so on.

But do all these apply to rhetorical questions as well?

Some people find them a sign of lazy writing and reject them because they’re not bringing real value, wasting the reader’s time.

Others, on the contrary, see them as a way of making texts more conversational and allowing the reader to identify himself with the topic, thus wanting to read more.

To use or not to use rhetorical questions, that’s the question!

Here’s why you might want to avoid rhetorical questions:

Lazy, patronizing, too commercial, and even with the potential of making the reader scroll away — these are just a few labels we can attach to rhetorical questions.

What’s the point in asking a question that doesn’t expect an answer?

Especially if you’re using it as a means to connect two ideas, one might argue that there are always better ways to improve your writing while giving value to the reader.

You want your readers to slide on your text rather than jump around.

But they don’t owe you this!

So, you’ll have to work hard to keep them in the attention trance, making every word count.

Rhetorical questions can make some fragments seem like they are not worth the reader’s time, making him lose interest in whatever you have to say next.

Those who use rhetorical questions typically formulate them to imply a positive answer that goes without saying.

Nevertheless, each reader comes with his emotional luggage, and your question could trigger a “heck, no” response in his mind, rather…