Maybe this is a bit of a ridiculous question, but I am wondering about it, so here we go:
Do Japanese language use question marks at the end of question sentences? (I mean in formal Japanese with the desu, masu etc, not how we text with friends etc.)
I notice that the example sentences here at Renshuu often uses question marks at the end, but as far as I can recall back in the day (approx 10 years ago), when I went to Japanese language school and studied it in uni, I can not recall us writing them? The particle ka in itself was enough for it to indicate that it was a question, IF I recall it correctly. I have not studied Japanese for years and I am just getting back into it, so I might have a total brain-fart here and have actually used question marks for formal Japanese in the past. Or maybe this is a fairly new thing? A recent change since language is dynamic?
Edit: I did some googling, and a lot of sources still say question marks are not used in formal Japanese - but these sources also seem to be 3 - 5 years old. (Example from Tofugu: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-punctuation/)
I have a question related to this. The way I understood it, if there's a question word in the sentence, like 何, then an additional か isn't necessary to identify it as a question. But occasionally I see sentences with both a question word and か...