OK question mark haters, I don't understand it, and I don't think I'm going to understand it. But I have many other more valuable hills to die on! So, here's a question: Instead of "Does creatine make you smarter?" would you hate "I looked into Creatine’s alleged cognitive benefits” less?
A saying with art: You first have to learn and master a rule, then you can know when to break it.
writing is an art form. Mediocre writers (click bait news article producers) would benefit from mastering Betteridge's law. Exceptional writers (you) can break the law when the art calls for it.
commenting is an art form. (perhaps so is reading comprehension.)
mediocre trolls will deride you for breaking Betteridge's law. A more talented troll might suggest: your blog post on betteridge's law sucks because the title should have WAY MORE question marks in it : )
Curious to see how long writers (or subeditors) have been employing the attention-seeking question headline, I clumsily* searched Trove and turned up:
"Are Australians Too Thin-Skinned?" 1898
"Are your Clothes too Heavy, or shabby for summer wear?" 1898
"Are there too many Agricultural Shows?" 1896
"Are we educated too much?" 1890
"Do we eat too much?" 1881
"OUR COWS: ARE THEY A NUISANCE, OR ARE THEY NOT?" 1880**
The thin-skinned Australians article is pleasantly thoughtful***; the clothes one is an advertisement for a tailor; the rest do seem to grapple with their topic seriously and not fluff around for eight paragraphs before coming to the obvious conclusion. So it seems there was a honeymoon period in which title questions were known to pique interest before people began abusing their readers' attention.
* Search terms 1803-1900, 'articles', all words: "are too ?", 100-1000w; you can't search titles specifically alas
**A truly unimprovable example of 1880s verbiage and the ultimate antidote to AI slop; we eventually learn "for the truth is that the predatory hordes of cows that are illegally
and culpably permitted by the Councillors and their responsible and invisible officer (the Ranger) to prowl about day and night at their own sweet pleasure, have largely been the cause of all this [destruction of public gardens and fencing]".
***and an exception to Betteridge (come at me fellow Aussies, prove the point)
"Hesitantly against over-broad Betteridge dunking" would have drawn me in a lot more enthusiastically than the shit question mark title that you went with.
Your reputation carries you though.
Whatever you think of a ban, question titles are reliably a red flag warning of unclear writing; people paid to write but don't know what they have to say.
I think the Law is mostly valid for news, as in "if this was really novel the headline wouldn't be a question", but for essays and more introspective stuff with no actual right answers it should be fine.
I actually love this Law as a pocket rule, because I work in finance and have to read lots of news, and quickly, to act according to the newest information available. So I just skip any articles with question marks on their titles. Saves me more time than you'd imagine
My hot take is that all headlines are designed to inspire an emotion, and question headlines are designed to inspire annoyance or rage. At best, they can be used for curiosity, but I find curiosity is better stoked by saying something clever and related. For example, my working title for your post would be something like "Better than Betteridge", which I'd give a B- but good enough to set a threshold for something better.
Yeah, people will click on things that make them angry. It is called ragebait for a reason. “So and so was talking shit about you” “oh? I’ll go see what they’re saying”. The point is to generate a strong enough emotion to engage with the content, whereas if the content is sufficiently engaging (eg Aliens land on earth) there’s no need to dress it up.
also, question marks can be manipulative for sure, but statements can be just as clickbaity. take this title of a recent viral Atlantic article for example -(I'd rather have cancer than see AI move this fast) - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/ai-cancer-progress/687654/. the writer never really proves what cancer has to do with ai moving too fast.
it’s frustrating but digital publications have increasingly been pushed toward titles that are more provocative / suggestive / manipulative so i’m not sure the question mark is the problem anymore sadly.
The main problem with question mark titles is that they scream "Clickbait!" This is also the main reason that they get used so often. Perhaps, like those "one weird trick" headlines, their ubiquity will fade over time as they become less effective at drawing the suckers in. But for now, I take a title posed as a yes/no question to be a strong signal to skip the article. (Note that I don't view "why", "how", or "what" titles the same way.)
Of course, those familiar with your writing know that dynomight is no clickbaiter. So I read your stuff irrespective of the title.
1. Perhaps the question mark is indeed to signal controversy where none exists. And that's perhaps "good" if your idea of good is to draw more readers and increase your ad impressions. (I'm using the Royal "you" there...)
2. I wonder if Betteridge's bears some casual or strong relationship to "can't prove a negative"
"lucid examination" essays are also my favorites! which is why i love your blog. (i'm guessing that getting dunked on is at least a LITTLE annoying, even if you accept it, so i'm hoping that saying something nice offsets it a bit.) xo!
I can't claim to be completely immune to the effects of dunking, but I'm fine, really! The amount of dunking I get seems statistically normal—or even somewhat low—and is far outweighed by positive reactions like yours (♡).
(Mea culpa: first thing I did was go look at all my posts to see how guilty I was.)
But more to the point here:
Betteridge is an unfortunate clickbaiting trick that helps with current engagement/impression seekers Understandable.
I want an LLM AI that reverse-weights my feed. It starts with my feed, applies a reverse weighting based on Betteridge and another million factors that I'm guilty of falling for, and then shows me things that actually help me rather than engage me. The feed-sources of the world wouldn't like it (it will reduce # of articles read, presumably, and thus monetization prospects). Is there such a tool?
This is surely not what you're looking for, but a curated RSS feed full of writers that I've followed for long enough that I've developed a sense of what their titles mean largely solves this problem for me.
Well, it seems like a short trip from something being a (valid) self-defense trick to it being a normative claim about how titles should be written. Shouldn't you, as much as possible, avoid putting readers in a position where they need to defend themselves?
A related issue is that sometimes I do feel like there's a pretty clear answer, and I'm willing to state that and defend it, but I don't want to do that right at the beginning because it empirically leads to "nonsense" criticisms. E.g. I had this post about humidifiers where I got "baffling" reactions: https://dynomight.net/internet-writing/#:~:text=Failures
When I re-wrote it to be a bit more "sly", those reactions stopped happening. Part of me feels bad about it, but it seems kind of foolishly stubborn to totally ignore real effects: https://dynomight.net/internet-writing/#:~:text=you%2E-,Take
I think in general it is helpful to not think of rhetoric as separate from writing. We have this fantasy that it's possible to change people's minds without resorting to techniques of persuasion, but honestly idk if that's possible, let alone even desirable; there's nothing wrong with trying to make the truth presentable. But I just started Aristotle's Rhetoric and am reading at a snail's pace so maybe I'll change my mind about this in a month or two
OK question mark haters, I don't understand it, and I don't think I'm going to understand it. But I have many other more valuable hills to die on! So, here's a question: Instead of "Does creatine make you smarter?" would you hate "I looked into Creatine’s alleged cognitive benefits” less?
A saying with art: You first have to learn and master a rule, then you can know when to break it.
writing is an art form. Mediocre writers (click bait news article producers) would benefit from mastering Betteridge's law. Exceptional writers (you) can break the law when the art calls for it.
commenting is an art form. (perhaps so is reading comprehension.)
mediocre trolls will deride you for breaking Betteridge's law. A more talented troll might suggest: your blog post on betteridge's law sucks because the title should have WAY MORE question marks in it : )
Curious to see how long writers (or subeditors) have been employing the attention-seeking question headline, I clumsily* searched Trove and turned up:
"Are Australians Too Thin-Skinned?" 1898
"Are your Clothes too Heavy, or shabby for summer wear?" 1898
"Are there too many Agricultural Shows?" 1896
"Are we educated too much?" 1890
"Do we eat too much?" 1881
"OUR COWS: ARE THEY A NUISANCE, OR ARE THEY NOT?" 1880**
The thin-skinned Australians article is pleasantly thoughtful***; the clothes one is an advertisement for a tailor; the rest do seem to grapple with their topic seriously and not fluff around for eight paragraphs before coming to the obvious conclusion. So it seems there was a honeymoon period in which title questions were known to pique interest before people began abusing their readers' attention.
* Search terms 1803-1900, 'articles', all words: "are too ?", 100-1000w; you can't search titles specifically alas
**A truly unimprovable example of 1880s verbiage and the ultimate antidote to AI slop; we eventually learn "for the truth is that the predatory hordes of cows that are illegally
and culpably permitted by the Councillors and their responsible and invisible officer (the Ranger) to prowl about day and night at their own sweet pleasure, have largely been the cause of all this [destruction of public gardens and fencing]".
***and an exception to Betteridge (come at me fellow Aussies, prove the point)
How about "Betteridge dunking is sometimes bad"?
"Hesitantly against over-broad Betteridge dunking" would have drawn me in a lot more enthusiastically than the shit question mark title that you went with.
Your reputation carries you though.
Whatever you think of a ban, question titles are reliably a red flag warning of unclear writing; people paid to write but don't know what they have to say.
I think the Law is mostly valid for news, as in "if this was really novel the headline wouldn't be a question", but for essays and more introspective stuff with no actual right answers it should be fine.
I actually love this Law as a pocket rule, because I work in finance and have to read lots of news, and quickly, to act according to the newest information available. So I just skip any articles with question marks on their titles. Saves me more time than you'd imagine
Is it bad that Dynomight's blogs are so easy to read that I can binge out on them?
My hot take is that all headlines are designed to inspire an emotion, and question headlines are designed to inspire annoyance or rage. At best, they can be used for curiosity, but I find curiosity is better stoked by saying something clever and related. For example, my working title for your post would be something like "Better than Betteridge", which I'd give a B- but good enough to set a threshold for something better.
Too hot! You mean they are *intended* to create annoyance or rage? I'm so confused!
Yeah, people will click on things that make them angry. It is called ragebait for a reason. “So and so was talking shit about you” “oh? I’ll go see what they’re saying”. The point is to generate a strong enough emotion to engage with the content, whereas if the content is sufficiently engaging (eg Aliens land on earth) there’s no need to dress it up.
here's a good use case for a question in the title - https://www.owlposting.com/p/why-havent-organoids-solved-all-of
also, question marks can be manipulative for sure, but statements can be just as clickbaity. take this title of a recent viral Atlantic article for example -(I'd rather have cancer than see AI move this fast) - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/ai-cancer-progress/687654/. the writer never really proves what cancer has to do with ai moving too fast.
it’s frustrating but digital publications have increasingly been pushed toward titles that are more provocative / suggestive / manipulative so i’m not sure the question mark is the problem anymore sadly.
The main problem with question mark titles is that they scream "Clickbait!" This is also the main reason that they get used so often. Perhaps, like those "one weird trick" headlines, their ubiquity will fade over time as they become less effective at drawing the suckers in. But for now, I take a title posed as a yes/no question to be a strong signal to skip the article. (Note that I don't view "why", "how", or "what" titles the same way.)
Of course, those familiar with your writing know that dynomight is no clickbaiter. So I read your stuff irrespective of the title.
2 thoughts:
1. Perhaps the question mark is indeed to signal controversy where none exists. And that's perhaps "good" if your idea of good is to draw more readers and increase your ad impressions. (I'm using the Royal "you" there...)
2. I wonder if Betteridge's bears some casual or strong relationship to "can't prove a negative"
(57) Does every question mark deserve a Betteridge? treats the reader like an adult. No hedging, no inspirational ending, just the work.
"lucid examination" essays are also my favorites! which is why i love your blog. (i'm guessing that getting dunked on is at least a LITTLE annoying, even if you accept it, so i'm hoping that saying something nice offsets it a bit.) xo!
I can't claim to be completely immune to the effects of dunking, but I'm fine, really! The amount of dunking I get seems statistically normal—or even somewhat low—and is far outweighed by positive reactions like yours (♡).
(Mea culpa: first thing I did was go look at all my posts to see how guilty I was.)
But more to the point here:
Betteridge is an unfortunate clickbaiting trick that helps with current engagement/impression seekers Understandable.
I want an LLM AI that reverse-weights my feed. It starts with my feed, applies a reverse weighting based on Betteridge and another million factors that I'm guilty of falling for, and then shows me things that actually help me rather than engage me. The feed-sources of the world wouldn't like it (it will reduce # of articles read, presumably, and thus monetization prospects). Is there such a tool?
This is surely not what you're looking for, but a curated RSS feed full of writers that I've followed for long enough that I've developed a sense of what their titles mean largely solves this problem for me.
Well, it seems like a short trip from something being a (valid) self-defense trick to it being a normative claim about how titles should be written. Shouldn't you, as much as possible, avoid putting readers in a position where they need to defend themselves?
A related issue is that sometimes I do feel like there's a pretty clear answer, and I'm willing to state that and defend it, but I don't want to do that right at the beginning because it empirically leads to "nonsense" criticisms. E.g. I had this post about humidifiers where I got "baffling" reactions: https://dynomight.net/internet-writing/#:~:text=Failures
When I re-wrote it to be a bit more "sly", those reactions stopped happening. Part of me feels bad about it, but it seems kind of foolishly stubborn to totally ignore real effects: https://dynomight.net/internet-writing/#:~:text=you%2E-,Take
I think in general it is helpful to not think of rhetoric as separate from writing. We have this fantasy that it's possible to change people's minds without resorting to techniques of persuasion, but honestly idk if that's possible, let alone even desirable; there's nothing wrong with trying to make the truth presentable. But I just started Aristotle's Rhetoric and am reading at a snail's pace so maybe I'll change my mind about this in a month or two
I too feel queasy about this. I don't think you can avoid doing it, to some degree, but it feels like a slippery slope. This issue is under-theorized!