"A 2016 study of a sample of academic journals (not news publications) that set out to test Betteridge's law and Hinchliffe's rule (see below) found that few titles were posed as questions and of those that were questions, few were yes/no questions and they were more often answered "yes" in the body of the article rather than "no".[11]
A 2018 study of 2,585 articles in four academic journals in the field of ecology similarly found that very few titles were posed as questions at all, with 1.82 percent being wh-questions and 2.15 percent being yes/no questions. Of the yes/no questions, 44 percent were answered "yes", 34 percent "maybe", and only 22 percent were answered "no".[12]
In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine "
I've stopped using question marks they are no longer needed and offend people.
No.
Even the often linked Wikipedia article said -
"A 2016 study of a sample of academic journals (not news publications) that set out to test Betteridge's law and Hinchliffe's rule (see below) found that few titles were posed as questions and of those that were questions, few were yes/no questions and they were more often answered "yes" in the body of the article rather than "no".[11]
A 2018 study of 2,585 articles in four academic journals in the field of ecology similarly found that very few titles were posed as questions at all, with 1.82 percent being wh-questions and 2.15 percent being yes/no questions. Of the yes/no questions, 44 percent were answered "yes", 34 percent "maybe", and only 22 percent were answered "no".[12]
In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine "
Son of a
Betteridge's Law Not As Accurate As We Thought
We Tested Ten Laws of the Internet: the Results Are In
Answer Rhetorical Questions with This One Weird Trick
Historical Deep Dive: Betteridge Before the Invention of Punctuation
You Won't Believe What Betteridge Wore to the WH Correspondents Dinner!
High Court Poised to Grant Stay Against Appeal of Injunction in Betteridge Case Before Gag Order Motion Deadline Takes Effect
Nation beset by interrogative titles: Betteridge
Betteridge's Law Considered Harmful
Headline Slams Betteridge's Law
Betteridge's Law: Here's What We Know
Sitcks Nix Betteridge's Law Pix
Ask HN: Is every headline just a Betteridge headline now?
We analyzed 10M articles and found most questions don't need answers
I built a classifier that tells you if a headline ends in a question mark for engagement
We replaced all headlines with statements and traffic disappeared