Sometimes in life we may face awkward questions, but surely that doesn't mean that we should be inherently afraid of question marks? For some reason people seem a bit keen to remove them from the titles of various media. as shown above.
Anyone have any idea why this is ?
Er, I mean, "anyone have any idea why this is"...
3 comments:
I think it started in the mid-80s when theystarted covering Doctor Who in question marks.
John - Actually, I can answer this one. It's an old superstition, rather like all of that 'Scottish Play' nonsense that a show should never have a question mark in the title. The tradition simply crept across into movies with the invention of celluloid. As to why a question mark is unlucky, I have no idea. Perhaps because it offers the critics a feed line? At the turn of the 19th century, the Duchess Theatre in London put on a show called A good time. Despite the lack of question mark, one reviewer wrote simply 'No.'
Thanks for that Steve, I genuinely had never heard that.
I've heard it suggested that films and plays and the like should never contain lines such as "I don't know how much more of this I can bear" as it gives critics an easy target, I didn't realise it had migrated over to film... though it does explain why the correctly-postered Whatever Happened To Harold Smith? didn't set the box office on fire.
Mind you, I like Andrew's theory better - the BBC used up the allocation of question marks, eh?
J
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