Wednesday, 2/23

If a rhetorical question was a color, what color would it be?

Believe it or not, that's actually not just a rhetorical question in and of itself. As I've mentioned in here before, my friend Deanna and I, bemoaning the fact that e-mail doesn't always capture the intent of the writer, have decreed that whenever we say something sarcastic we do so in pink. That way, one of us knows exactly what the other wants to get across, and any confusion is there avoided.

And trust me—we both use pink a LOT.

While e-mailing her yesterday I asked a question, and in return she asked if my pink was broken, our code for “you're really being sarcastic but forgot to use pink, right?” The thing is, I wasn't being sarcastic, and while it was a question that could (thanks to e-mail) be considered sarcastic, it wasn't. It was rhetorical. And since (once again) e-mail doesn't convey any of the nuance of the spoken word, we decided that any time either of us writes a rhetorical question it, like sarcasm, must be in a certain color.

But which color?

Now, I realize not a lot of people (okay, ANY people) would spend a small chunk of their day trying to figure out the “color” of a certain aspect of the written word, but as you all know I'm any but normal. And despite her best efforts to appear otherwise, Deanna really isn't, either. But she had a great point, in that a rhetorical question needs to be highlighted just like sarcasm, lest it be misunderstood. We chose pink for sarcasm because, well, pink looks like sarcasm. Yes, I realize that grammatical concepts usually don't look like colors, but as I just mentioned, we're not normal. So play along with us, if you would.

Unlike sarcasm, though, neither of us immediately associated a color with a rhetorical question. The first thing that popped into my head was a brownish hue; I don't know why, but it did. The problem with brown is that when you're reading an e-mail, especially on your phone, brown(ish) looks an awful lot like black, and neither of us has time to stare at an e-mail looking for a certain color to try and figure out if it's an actual question or a rhetorical question

So it's not brown.

At the moment we're stumped. There are a lot of colors that would stand out in an e-mail, but there doesn't seem to be a color that screams “this is a rhetorical question” the same way that pink screams “I'm being sarcastic”. So if you have a few seconds this week, close your eyes, let your mind float, and think to yourself--

“If a rhetorical question was a color, what color would it be”?

Both Deanna and I thank you very much.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)